Caroline Wawzonek

Madam Speaker, I move, seconded by the honourable Member from Hay River North, that Bill 16, An Act to Amend the Income Tax Act, be read for the second time. The bill reduces the small business tax rate from 4 percent to 2 percent effective January 1, 2020. It also makes retroactive amendments to harmonize the Northwest Territories tax regime with the federal system. Those amendments do two things: ensure that split income received by a senior is factored into the determination of their Territorial Age Credit; and allow more pension credit for veterans. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

There is actually a Buy North campaign already that the department of ITI has been sponsoring. It's free for all businesses to participate in the program. It's being advertised around the Northwest Territories, though, given the question, it seems that perhaps the knowledge about the program needs to be looked at again. As for what might be done to increase or enhance the participation in the program for businesses and what we can do, I will certainly go and see if there are some best practices from my colleagues in other parts of the country, that we can employ here in advance of the...

I am certainly not one to shy away from the fact that we need to react quickly to what's happening with COVID-19 and react quickly to what's happening in the business community. However, at the same time, I am also determined that we have to maintain our due diligence before making a policy change that is to a program that has been long-standing, so I am not going to take a position here on the floor today that we will significantly alter that program going forward.

The Member has certainly given me an interesting way of approaching business relief. There are a lot of programs that are out...

Thank you, Madam Speaker. This is an item where there are a number of different things happening that are specific to women in the North and the response under COVID. There certainly has been funding that has been under specific pots of the relief funding that we received from the federal government that is required to go toward supporting vulnerable populations. That would be particularly people fleeing relationships of violence, certainly, the majority of which do tend to be women. There has also been funding that has been directed toward supporting women who would be more vulnerable, for...

In some ways, it's a simple yes in that that is the goal of the Department of Finance through Procurement Shared Services, to ensure that we are providing value not only, obviously, to the people of the Northwest Territories in the expenditure of public funds, but value to the business community. It really is an easy answer, in that sense, but how we do it is where it becomes more complicated. As I have indicated, we are fast-tracking efforts to have procurement review but also looking at some immediate measures that we can bring into place, hopefully before the next sitting, again, on an...

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I think the Member's statement earlier on actually identified that this, indeed, in large part, does involve the procurement of resources and procurement of projects through the Government of the Northwest Territories. As I mentioned in my own Minister's statement today, we acknowledge that there certainly has been a lot of discussion around ensuring that the procurement processes we have are indeed providing best benefits to the people of the Northwest Territories and the businesses of the Northwest Territories.

Again, and I know the Member acknowledged it, there is...

Madam Speaker, I wish to table the following document: "Supplementary Estimates (Operations Expenditures), No. 2, 2020-2021." Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Again, I am very confident the department is listening carefully to the ideas that are coming through on the floor. However, as far as coming up with new streams of funding, I can also say quite confidently that the Minister of Finance does not want me to make commitments around funding, short of using my due diligence to do that. I will go back. We will put some due diligence to it, see if there are some other options here. There certainly are funding options right now through COVID, and I realize it's not a perfect system. Nothing is. Everyone is doing the best they can with what they have...

Thank you, Madam Speaker. As I had noted last week, we are committed to doing an internal review of the SEED policy, and included within that will be the market disruption clause. The larger communities versus the smaller communities in different regional centres have different views on whether or not market disruption is beneficial or necessary, with those opinions going very strongly one way or another. In the middle of a pandemic is not an opportunity to wholesale change that, but that is why there is the COVID-related stream that doesn't have the market disruption clause in it so that for...

The longer-term strategy for small businesses, I'll refer, again, to the fact that we had fast-tracked the procurement review. To that extent, I want to be very clear that it's my intention that that review engages those small businesses directly, engages the chambers, engages Indigenous governments, Indigenous development corporations, really looks broadly at what it is that we need to do to support the business community in all of its facets here in the Northwest Territories. Again, ensuring that we have interim measures in place before January, but also then is engaging for COVID related...