The exact cost, I am not sure, but a $200,000 investment, you would think, would save significant dollars if there is damage to the community as a result of the fire. I know that we are in negotiations with Canada on the disaster mitigation funding. That would be another pot of money that communities would be able to access to help with disaster mitigation. We feel that there is significant investment in this particular area, again, so we leave the authority to make these types of decisions up to the communities. You will find that communities do make good decisions. Where there are...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As we know, we have issues with fire around some of our communities, and ENR tries to work with the communities to deal with it. Through, I think, the community access program through MACA, there is some funding there that the communities can use if they want to fire smart their communities.

During this past fire season, it was a fairly quiet fire season for us, so we actually had some members of our fire crews, just to keep working, do some fire smarting around the communities, cut some brush. As we are able to do, we will assist them, but there are some monies out...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Hay River South, that Bill 43, An Act to Amend the Income Tax Act, be read for the second time. This bill amends the Income Tax Act to make changes to non-refundable tax claimed by multi-jurisdictional individual tax filers, including changes that restrict the Northwest Territories' pension credit to the Northwest Territories' residents, and changes that allow co-pension and dividend credits to be claimed by Northwest Territories residents with business income earned outside the territories. This bill also amends the Income...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Yellowknife South, that Bill 42, An Act to Amend the Petroleum Products Tax Act, be read for the second time.

The bill amends the Petroleum Products Tax Act to impose a carbon tax on petroleum products and natural gas. It makes the amendments necessary for collection and administration of this new tax to be handled in the same manner as the current fuel tax. Purchasers are required to pay the tax, and vendors and collectors are required to remit the tax to the Government of the Northwest Territories. The bill allows the...

Most departments have 20-year infrastructure acquisition plans, and as money becomes available, they are able to put those plans in to do the actual building. You know, there are Members who are coming after us and I think we are going to position them to come and realize that there are some decisions that were made in this Assembly, I think, that made their work a little easier, and we hope it is a little easier, and if they are in a good position to match a lot of the federal projects, I don't know what is coming on. I mean, we have had some of the projects that we have been working on or we...

I have, as I said, initiated talks with them. We have not been able to sit down yet. We have been in session for awhile, now, but our next Finance Ministers' meeting, I believe, is in June. There might be opportunities for me to have a conversation with the federal Finance Minister beforehand and see if we can work on -- we are fortunate right now that, with the borrowing limit that we do have, most of our project, we are able to fit under there, but if there are announcements for bigger projects that might need more of an investment from the Government of the Northwest Territories, then we...

I am the Environment Minister, so I will speak with the Finance Minister and see if there are opportunities to access more money, but again, through a number of the programs that we have, such as disaster mitigation, there are funds that we will be able to access to assist with the communities. The communities, again, have those funds at their disposal if they choose to use them to do some fire smarting, with the folks that we have, because of the quiet fire season, assisting them. There are a number of opportunities there with the small community employment fund. I believe, in one community...

Actually, I don't think that we have offloaded that onto the communities. I think that the communities have taken the responsibility for that on, because who knows the communities more than the community, Mr. Speaker? It is not another pot of money that we have. The small community employment fund had, I believe, about $4.2 million, of which $3 million went to a lot of the smaller communities. Through the process that we are going through right now, we have added more money onto that because it has been such an important tool for a lot of the small communities. They have that opportunity to...

Mr. Speaker, yesterday, I recognized a couple of Pages who we had from Inuvik Twin Lakes. Today, I would like to recognize their chaperone. Blair Conley brought them down here. I would also like to take a minute to recognize Rita Furlong Arey from Aklavik, who I affectionately call Rita B. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The government is opposed to any kind of tax, but this is one that the federal government, in their infinite wisdom, had decided that they were going to implement, regardless. So our challenge was to try to mitigate the impact that it was going to have on people across the Northwest Territories. Our folks at the department went across the Northwest Territories. They listened to people. They understood that a tax was coming. They did not like it. Everybody is opposed to a new tax. That is why this government has in our four years done very little as far as raising taxes...