Floyd Roland

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Thebacha, that Bill 6, an Act to Amend the Payroll Tax Act, 1993 and the Income Tax Act, be read for the first time. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, we would have to look at supp No. 1 and No. 2 which are taking up the lion's share of that and what was approved by the previous government as they dealt with those bills. This one, the additional costs as we've laid out are driven by a number of factors, the large majority of that around operations and maintenance, health and justice, as well. We have the details and we can go through it to see what those drivers are. Supp No. 1 and No. 2 came to almost $8 million out of supp No. 1 and another $5 million out of supp No. 2. Again we're coming with...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the work that has been done to date in here is the best work we have available in working with the federal government on the numbers provided, in trying to secure the base that we have of revenue, and ensuring that we can deliver the programs and services we have available to residents today. This is not about getting rich, this is not about enhancing what is there, it is about securing the revenues that we have to date so that we can deliver the programs that we have, and it is about sustainability.

Being a money bill, this is very important to us that...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, this is not previously authorized, so it’s adding to the bottom line of the Department of Resources, Wildlife and Economic Development. Again, because it was midway through the year, it was felt that they did not have the resources in that activity area. So it came forward and was approved and that’s why it’s in this document. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, as I stated earlier, I will get more details. But again, if in fact we are using those dollars to contract individuals to do that work on behalf of government, then we will look at doing that as sort of a way of getting the job done. But I am aware that, as well, for those jobs that are vacant there have been a number of attempts to fill them. Unfortunately on a couple of occasions, there were no candidates that were accepted for those positions, so they have looked at going through the process once again. But I will take that concern forward and get...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I have with me the secretary to the FMB, Mr. Lew Voytilla.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, again, I would like to thank the Member and all of the Members for their comments regarding the initiative that is before them, and the increase of corporate taxes. I agree, taxes are never popular, and I didn’t take this job with a goal that l would cause an increase in order to provide services to our NWT residents. But after looking at the scenario presented to us and trying to come up with a balance, we have had to wrestle with this, look at our options that we had available in trying to get something in the 2004-05 year. I have heard a lot of...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, this is the remnants of the program that we have in place or had in place and the employee purchased it, a buy-back program, that was started in previous governments. This is the remainder. We have grandfathered those that were already in the system that had agreements that the government would buy back their units once they moved from the community. So we’ve transferred that responsibility to the NWT Housing Corporation so it’s now in their budget and this is following up on one of those commitments that was already remaining. It was already in place...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Supplementary Appropriation Act, No. 3, 2003-2004 requests authority for additional appropriations of $8.568 million for operation expenditures and $1.628 million for capital investment expenditures.

Major items included in this request for operations and expenditures are as follows:

$3 million for the Department of Health and Social Services for the following items:

$1.6 million for retroactive increases to compensation for nurses and allied health care professional positions as a result of job re-evaluations.

$806,000 for additional costs associated with a...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Again, the way our corporate tax is reported to our government, it is through the federal government. They collect our corporate tax and report it back to us. What we have done, is based on estimates of prior years, felt that we would build estimates on that, and as it gets closer to the actual time of preparing the draft main estimates we call federal Finance to get the actual last sort of up-to-date number that they have available. Based on those, we build our estimates.

Now on 12 percent, looking at what the estimates were built on, we felt, and through the...