Wendy Bisaro

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and thanks to the Minister for his comments. I have to respectfully disagree. I don’t think that we have to raise revenues through taxes. There are other options that are available to us, and some of those options were suggested in the summaries from the roundtable.

So I’d like to know from the Minister, other than looking at taxes, has the department looked at other options to increase our revenue sources, such as resource rents, for instance. Thank you.

Thank you to the Minister. I attended the discussion and the presentation in Yellowknife and I found it very interesting, and the Minister is right that there were some interesting discussions and some interesting ideas that were brought up there. One of the things that was mentioned at the meeting here in Yellowknife was that there was no reference at all to revenue in the budget presentation, and in the documents and in the discussions that were held that night. So I’d like to ask the Minister if he can explain why there was no discussion and no consideration of new revenues in the budget at...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It gives me great pleasure again to welcome Jeff Corradetti to the House. Welcome, Jeff. You’re making a habit of this.

Thank you, Minister Abernethy. I would now like to go to the chairperson of the Standing Committee on Social Programs, the committee which reviewed this bill, to make comments. Mr. Moses.

Thank you. Okay, committee, we’ll return to page 1, Bill 8, An Act to Amend the Securities Act. Bill as a whole.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Again, I’m a little confused. From what the Minister just told me, it sounds as though there is a plan, although I don’t think that I necessarily agree with it. If, as the Minister says, we’re going to go to Hay River and then we’re going to go to the Beaufort-Delta – and you mentioned another number of $1.8 million that I don’t know for what – if we know that already, why can we not get that before committee now? Why can we not take what we know and plan for implementation in 2013-2014?

Thank you, Minister Abernethy. Committee, are there any general comments in regard to Bill 8? Is committee agreed we go to detail?

I appreciate the Minister’s response that there’s some money being allocated. It has been allocated, as he’s said though, in 2013-2014. In my mind, that’s a problem. I don’t understand why, with the report that came out some four or five months ago now, we couldn’t start some planning in this budget year, 2012-2013, to do some implementation in 2013-2014. I’d ask the Minister to tell me why we can’t do planning this year for implementation in the next budget year.

Is committee agreed to bring witnesses into the House?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It’s my pleasure to recognize a constituent from Frame Lake, Jeff Corradetti. Welcome to the House to Jeff and to everybody else up there. Thank you.