Floyd Roland

Thank you, Madam Chair. To my immediate right is the deputy minister of the Department of Finance, Ms. Margaret Melhorn; to my immediate left is Ms. Rebecca Veinott from the Department of Justice; and, further to my right is Mr. Gerry Gagnon, manager of tax policy. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I do have some comments on Bill 6, An Act to Amend the Payroll Tax Act, 1993 and the Income Tax Act.

Thank you for the opportunity to present Bill 6, the government’s proposed changes to the Payroll Tax Act, 1993 and the Income Tax Act.

In my budget address, I proposed an increase to the payroll tax rate from one percent to two percent effective January 1, 2005. To minimize the negative impacts of this change on lower income NWT residents, I also proposed that the personal income tax rate for the lowest bracket be decreased from 7.2 percent to 5.9 percent and the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I give notice that on Monday, May 31, 2004, I will move that Bill 10, Forgiveness of Debts Act, 2004-05, be read for the first time.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, earlier this month, the students and staff of Samuel Hearne Secondary School in Inuvik narrowly avoided tragedy when the roof of the foyer collapsed. As a parent of three children in the school and as MLA for the area, I am grateful that no one was injured. Since then, efforts have been focused on getting students back to class so that they are able to complete their school year. Although the subsequent fire in the gymnasium was a major setback, the timely response of the Inuvik fire department and the efforts of the school and education officials...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, there are a number of avenues we continue to work on, not only in our own sources of revenue, but today is the final piece of that package. We continue to work with our partners, with aboriginal governments in the Northwest Territories, when we go to Ottawa and advance the royalty revenue and discussions that are ongoing and try to ensure that the messages goes out that we are, in fact, doing the best we can with what we have. If we are going to be a positive asset to Canada, then the federal government needs to recognize that there needs to be more...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the two levels that we come on in the 15th Assembly is, one, we are faced with a problem and that is we don’t have enough revenues to run the existing level of programs and services. We’ve committed, and in the budget address I have committed and laid out the fact that we’ve found $10 million through this existing fiscal year and that we are going forward looking for another $20 million in the upcoming fiscal year and a further $20 million. So we are going through the exercise of restraint in the sense of trying to limit the growth of the Government of...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would just like to thank the Member for his comments. We’ve covered the area fairly thoroughly and put out the information that we have on the estimates we’ve used. This being the third piece, it’s one of the ones where we have an ability to ensure the lower income residents of the Northwest Territories don’t feel the impact of the changes, and that’s one of the considerations taken to this package. Any effort that we make in the sense of our own revenue sources impacts on us positively when we go to the federal government, through our tax effort in the formula...

Yes, Madam Chair, I do.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I give notice that on Monday, May 31, 2004, I will move that Bill 11, Supplementary Appropriation Act, No. 1, 2004-05, be read for the first time.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, again in how we would go about dealing with the Liquor Act review process, we would have to look at how we got that input; if it was in fact allowing for funding to go out to agencies to come and make presentations or, in fact, if we do a process where we go out and get their input. So we have to look at it. Cost is one area of concern that we have to look at for this whole process, but at the end of the day we want to ensure we have a Liquor Act that is up to date, that works for both sides of the equation in the sense of managing the sales and taxation...