Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I want to talk about carbon tax. I specifically want to talk about what we're doing as a territory to mitigate the cost of living and the cost of business impacts on carbon tax. I understand that we don't have a choice about imposing the tax. If the GNWT doesn't impose the tax, Ottawa will do it for us. But we do have a choice about how we spend the revenues from the carbon tax.
The government has decided to go with a madeintheNWT approach. But this approach leaves some residents, most businesses, and all community governments, Indigenous governments, and NGOs worse off.
The main estimates in the department documents provided breakdowns next year for 20232024. The GNWT expects to collect $63 million in carbon tax revenue but only $48 million of those revenues are earmarked as offsets. The remaining $15 million, about 25 percent, is going into general revenues. In other words, our madeintheNWT carbon tax is not revenue neutral. We are keeping $15 million in general revenues as we provide zero offsets to community governments who are already underfunded and will face pressure to raise property taxes or cut services, local businesses who will be forced to raise prices for goods and services, and NGOs who will have to stretch scarce dollars even further to provide vital services.
At the same time, of the $48 million in offsets that we do provide, the biggest piece, $24 million, or half, goes to the large emitters. That's more than the $20 million in the COLO payments to households. How fair is that?
Mr. Speaker, I know my colleagues on the other side share my frustration and disappointment at the way Ottawa is pushing its carbon tax with too little regard for our unique northern circumstances and its historical responsibilities to our region. But if we are going to go with a madeintheNWT approach, then we ought to have something that is better than the federal approach, something that is fairer too so that the government returns all revenues, and all sectors of societies can mitigate the tax. I'll have more questions for the Minister of Finance on making our carbon tax offsets fair. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member for Inuvik Twin Lakes. Members' statements. Member for Frame Lake.
