Jane Groenewegen

Let me ask myself another question now.

---Laughter

Mr. Speaker, the payroll tax, the rationale for it was understood when it was put in place in 1993 in that we had a lot of people that were beginning to work in the Northwest Territories who did not reside here. I know the federal government doesn’t want to hear us say this because there’s supposed to be free access and mobility within Canada. They don’t want to hear us say that we did it to tax fly-in/fly-out workers, but that was the rationale for it. As I said, with the rebates that were in place at the time under our tax system it was...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As Members of this House are aware, the NWT has had a payroll tax in place since 1993, before I became a Member. It happened before my time.

The tax was originally brought in because so many non-resident workers were flying in and out of the Territory on a regular basis and benefitting from our job opportunities, government programs and services, and public infrastructure without contributing to our tax base. A tax credit was brought in at the same time to partially offset the payroll tax for NWT resident workers.

In 2005 the payroll tax increased from 1 percent to 2...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’ve been reading some of the Hansard from the discussion yesterday in the House about naturopathic medicine and incorporating this practice in a new piece of legislation that’s come forward to licence health care practitioners in the Northwest Territories. In reading the Q and A in Hansard and stuff, I’m not really understanding what the issue is. So let me ask the Minister my own set of questions, because I can’t understand the answers to other people’s but maybe I’ll understand it if it’s just between me and her. Do you plan to include the practice of naturopathic...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We as a government are going out on the road spending countless hundreds and thousands, probably millions of dollars trying to tell people they should come and leave their mark, come to the Northwest Territories. Yet we get a northern person who goes out, studies their profession, comes back to the Northwest Territories to practice and we’re saying don’t give up your registration down south because we don’t have any way to register you here, don’t give up your credentials from another jurisdiction. We’re just telling them they might as well go back to that jurisdiction...

As I said in my Member’s statement, it would appear that this is something that is regulated already in other jurisdictions so we do have legislation that we could review in terms of wording and how it plays out in other jurisdictions. Why are we only reviewing this? This should be, I didn’t want to say a no brainer, but this to me should just be pretty straightforward, and if it isn’t, why isn’t it?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We are always talking about getting at the root causes of our problems in the Northwest Territories and how hard it is for us to do that mainly because we are often dealing with the immediate crises, the symptom, instead of the cause.

In health care there is an emerging group of professionals who focus on treating underlying causes. Naturopathic doctors stress preventative care, they practice natural medicine that combines scientific knowledge and traditional healing wisdom. They seek to tap into the healing power of nature. Of course, naturopathic medicine is not new...

None of that answer makes any sense to me. We are writing legislation for these different disciplines for people who are already delivering services in the Northwest Territories. How difficult and what would be the resistance to including naturopathic medicine in that? As I said, the precedent legislation is already out there in other jurisdictions. I don’t think it would take 10 years to go and see what they’re doing in Alberta or British Columbia and see what we could do. It just seems like an opportune time. If we’re already doing this legislation, why wouldn’t we add this one?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The wish of committee, or my wish, I move we report progress.

It seems like it would be a lot of work to judge each application, each proposal, each funding agreement individually. Are there not guidelines, parameters that, for example, four months into a fiscal year an NGO has their funding approved? In the meantime they have not been able to procure the services of an office manager or Internet services or different things that they would have on a monthly basis. Then they receive their funding four months into that fiscal year for the full year, but they’re only allowed to spend per month what was in the proposal. Is there not a standard? Would it...

We need to be more flexible in understanding and processing budget expenses for this committee. We need to appreciate the time and energy that our volunteers have put into organizing and operating NGOs. They are not usually qualified accountants; these are volunteers and we need to be flexible in approving their requests. Without these organizations in our communities, we would not have any of the services they provide.

I would like to extend my thanks to the many volunteers who operate NGOs in our communities and in Hay River. We need you and we appreciate you.