Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This government is flirting with a trend to encourage business as well as people to leave. We’ve all heard about the silo of government, and I am just curious. I’m just trying to get a sense. Does the Finance Minister, Minister Miltenberger, understand that there is a cost of living committee out there?
My question to the Minister of Finance is: how do his potential tax initiatives dovetail with the cost of living committee, which is intended to lower the cost of living of the average citizen up here? How does it dovetail? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The honourable Minister of Finance, Mr. Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The revenue options that are being talked about are two taxes that have been referred to, resource taxes. There is potential for payroll tax increases. There is potential for other taxes, like taxing further alcohol and tobacco. We are also looking at revenue options that include signing up for the Territorial Nominee Program for immigration that would allow us to bring, at the very least, 150 new people to the North every year to take the jobs that are currently going vacant. As well, we are looking at working with the mines through the SEAs to start capturing the fly in/fly out population. So they dovetail very nicely.
We’re also as a government, as the Premier indicated, prepared to invest significant amounts of money through having a balanced budget, being able to get the revenues and reduce government costs to make significant investments in alternate energy: wind, biomass, mini-hydro, expansion of the hydro grid. Those are all things that are going to directly impact, in the mid and long term, the cost of living in communities. So there’s a very good dovetailing fit.
Mr. Speaker, the Minister is all well and good, but we have to assume someone can still be here to be able to afford those.
This is starting to look like a tax shift, just like the Liberal plan by Dion. We’re going to tax on one end but encourage both on the other. It’s confusing, it’s ridiculous, and I think it affects the bottom line of common-sense people at their kitchen tables.
Looking at the blend between the tax initiatives and the cost of living, what effort is this Minister putting in to make sure government is functioning properly through a program review that looks at the basis of how we spend our money?
In the last budget there were funds identified and voted to set up a program review committee as part of the Refocusing Government initiative. We’re going to be coming forward with a plan, as the Premier indicated, about restructuring boards and agencies.
The issue of tax shifts. If we can move away from income taxes and taxes on that type of income to consumption taxes, I think that’s a good shift. And we want to look at making sure that those with the most are going to be prepared to pay more than those who have the least.
But very clearly, we have a whole number of initiatives that are tied in to this particular effort.
Mr. Speaker, would the Finance Minister agree a good place to start, when he considers his tax initiatives and the cost of living, would be maybe to start collecting on some of the IOUs — that money owed to us by the federal government, that $100 million of health money for NIHB? Wouldn’t that be a good start to this rather than firing people or adding new taxes?
Mr. Speaker, we’re talking about a government that’s going to be affordable. We’re talking about looking at revenues that currently haven’t been realized, like trying to grow the population.
We’ve been tasked to try to hit targets. The Members have indicated, through the last process, that doing it all on the backs of reductions of expenditures and programs is not the way they’re prepared to consider. So we’re looking at other options.
So, Mr. Speaker, we’re trying to be as broad thinking about this and as careful and as measured as we can be.
Final supplementary, Mr. Hawkins.
Mr. Speaker, who is really going to pay this? It’s not going to be the rich, because they can afford those big, fancy accountants. It’s not going to be the poor, because they don’t have anything to take. So this is going to keep coming down to the middle class groups that will keep paying this.
And you know what? You haven’t broadened the base. I’ve not heard of one single initiative in my lifetime so far out of this Finance Minister that will see us broaden the base. What is he planning to do for us to see real results in broadening the tax base of people of the Northwest Territories?
I’ve been Finance Minister for July, August, September, two months of which the Member was on holidays and I was working. But rest assured, Mr. Speaker, the intent is…. I’ll ask the Member for some indulgence here, not to get ahead of the process. We’ve asked for feedback. We’re going to come back with what we’ve heard. We’re going to look at the whole gambit of options that we have, and we want to lay that out and we want to have the full discussion with committee to make the right decisions. There are going to be tough decisions to be sure. We have a very high level of service in this territory and a government that is providing those services, and we have to be prepared to look at all those things.
I will just ask the Member to allow the process to run its course so that we can actually put something definitive on the table to have an informed discussion on.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The honourable Member for Kam Lake, Mr. Ramsay.
