Thank you, Madam Speaker. I do share the view that it's clear that our problems started with the 17th Assembly, Madam Speaker, but I will address my comments today to the Minister of Finance for the 19th Assembly.
Firstly, I believe this budget is lacking in two areas. One is more money for NGOs. I know this budget contains some increases for our nongovernment organizations, which was a result of the last budgets negotiations, and I thank the Minister of Finance and all the departments for their work on that, but I am concerned that this is simply set out to be a onetime funding. I spoke with many NGOs who had contribution agreements with no increase for over a decade, Madam Speaker. And I think what we are looking for here is a permanent policy, a change to the stock contribution agreement form, multiyear funding, and an inflationary increase built forward so that this is solved going forward for all Assemblies, Madam Speaker, not just a onetime topup.
The second point I would like to emphasize in order for me to support this budget is more funding for our communities. We have heard that multiple times in this House, and I think from day one there was some uncertainty and a bit of a tension in the budget of whether reducing the funding gap by $5 million meant $5 million total or it meant reducing the gap $5 million plus the inflation that gets built up over the time. It's clear the government is proposing that it's just $5 million fixed. At the very least, we need to see carbon tax revenue shared that is revenue neutral for those communities so that we are not actually passing a budget and a carbon tax that further puts our communities behind.
As well, Madam Speaker, I've made this point before. I think the budget is a time to open up some policy asks that are purely political. The GNWT doesn't like to do anything without a thorough review, without talking to everyone, without the strategy, the “what we heard” report, and then the legislative proposal. But I think everyone once in a while and I think budgets are a great time to pick out one thing and just announce that you're going to do it. In my last two budget addresses, I suggested that we introduce five paid sick days for workers. Our pandemic taught us that forcing people to choose between missing pay, where they struggle to buy groceries or going to work sick, is putting their coworkers at risk and it's ultimately hurting the economy. I once again make this plea. That is a simple change we can make. I know there has to be a grand review of the Employment Standards Act and we have to talk to everyone in the world about it, but sometimes you can just pick something out and get it done, Madam Speaker.
Madam Speaker, once again, I know I am asking for money, and I will not be remiss to say that we have to make hard choices. Some things I am willing to do on the revenue side, one is to create a high-income tax bracket. Presently in the Northwest Territories, under GNWT tax once you make over $147,000, you pay the same tax rate whether you're making $150,000 or $500,000. Almost every other jurisdiction in Canada has a tax bracket above 147. The Department of Finance estimates creating additional brackets, depending how they look, is somewhere between $800,000 or $3.5 million.
Secondly, I am willing to increase our corporate tax rate by one percent. We have one of the lowest corporate tax rates in Canada. We're largely always kind of pegged to Alberta, because we have this concern what Alberta's doing, but I'll note the Yukon next door has a much higher corporate tax rate and their economy's doing a lot better than ours, Madam Speaker. One percent on a corporate tax is approximately $3 million, Madam Speaker.
I made this plea in all my budgets I think we got to end the contracts for all fax machines. I budget this at about $100,000 in savings. As well there's been a number of proposals over the year for a completely paperless GNWT. We still rely on a whole lot of printing and a whole lot of paper. Estimates have shown that can save governments and our government up to $1 million. I know there are a number of efficiencies to be found. I am convinced that by creating a service GNWT model, with government service officers in the capital whereby income assistance, housing, many of these social assistance programs can all be dealt with by one person and one form, we will save money. There's some different ways you can make that work but I think the work to get Eservices online has really been lacking. Right now, the only things you can do are your fishing license, your healthcare card, and some DMV services. I know there's plans to roll out more, but it seems clear we are years and years away from bringing the social envelope into Eservices which would free up a lot of time for our already overworked officers, such as income assistance officers.
Madam Speaker, I want to express my disappointment that government renewal did not bring more effects to our budget in this Assembly. And I think one of the ironic things is a lot of the things that our government renewal was actually trying to do, trying to fix, is one of the reasons we didn't get it through fast enough. The government renewal, quoting from the Minister of Finance's own proposals, want to look at our process and do away things that are unnecessarily complicated, wasteful, or inefficient. They wanted to do away with getting rid of multiple application forms for a single programming or having unnecessarily complex internal approval processes. I am very convinced that the Department of Finance ran into its unnecessarily complex approval processes in order to implement government renewal where there were just simply too many voices at the table and direction cannot be provided to departments to clean up their processes. In the government renewal plan that the Minister initially presented, there was things like having its software that is intuitive and crosscompatible with other systems. Madam Speaker, our software does not talk to each other.
We heard yesterday the Minister of Housing say in one community she estimates that the housing waitlist is somewhere between three and seven years. The housing corporation doesn't even know what their wait lists are. They don't even know the state of their units. They don't have any coherent reporting on their maintenance. They have little to no software let alone some sort of software that would be compatible with all the other departments and all of the other work we need to do on our infrastructure and our capital planning.
One of the issues that government renewal identified is structure that is having too many middle managers and too much overhead and a culture of micromanaging. This is something that integrated service delivery and integrated case management both recognize, and both made recommendations, yet they were victims of their own bureaucracy where they did not have the authority to make recommendations or make orders to departments. And I get this is very hard. I think the next government, you have to do it from day one. You have to put it in the mandate letters. It needs to come from the Premier. And you have to be willing to move staff around, to redo job descriptions, to redo software, to integrate it all. It's not an easy task, and I don't believe one Minister or one deputy minister has the authority. It really has to be clear direction to set all of that out, and I am disappointed we did not see more from government renewal. But I hope that we find a way to find these efficiencies that result in better programming. I know a number of years the Government of Canada put a freeze on new programs because it was struggling to deliver the programs and services it currently had. And I think we're very much in that situation. It's always tempting to create a new tailored program but that creates a lot of staff time. It creates a lot more work when we have a lot of programs that we simply know need a topup. We have a lot of programs in competing areas that are multiple forms that I think can just be done away with or rolled into one. We need to stop trying to specialize so much.
Similarly in this vein, I think we need to do a lot more for digital government. One of the principles of Egovernment that I love is the onceonly principle. This is a principle where a government can only ask for a piece of information once, Madam Speaker. If you provide your 2019 T4 to the government, you can only do that they're only allowed to ask once. And then it is shared with all of the other departments. This applies for birth dates, your address once only. I can't even imagine how many times people, in addressing social assistance, apply the same forms and the same documents over and over and over again. We hear these stories and I think, you know, there are lots we can do in that digital government thing.
So just to quote the Minister of Finance, you know, words back at her, I really do believe in valuebased budgeting and prioritybased budgeting, and I think this year over year incremental budgeting that the GNWT does, where each department goes away, comes forward with their proposals, and we get this mishmash without clear centralized coordination, is not working for us. We don't have a clear picture of what programs are giving us value for money. And I guess I just express disappointment that we did not get far enough in this government and that this budget is not doing it. And I hope that in the remaining time we can make some progress on that.
But ultimately, Madam Speaker, I've shared a number of solutions of things we can do. I've shared my two funding priorities, which, is at the end of the day our nonprofits are delivering the best value for dollar. I don't need a government renewal to tell me that. And they need a little more help. And our communities as well, Madam Speaker, they need a little more help. I've provided a few ways in which I am willing to fund that and make some hard decisions. I look forward to our continued budget negotiations. Thank you, Madam Speaker.
