Michael Miltenberger

We would be prepared to look at all of the suggestions. I am not prepared to negotiate the contents of the upcoming budget in the House. At this point, there have been lots of recommendations made. We are looking at trying to maintain tax levels, so we are looking at things like tax shifting, recognizing, as well, it’s a delicate balancing act.

The other concern is if you continue to raise taxes at the high income level as well, you have trouble attracting people when they look at the tax regime and where is the best place for them to come and provide their services. We recognize the pressures...

I will be talking about this issue with my Cabinet colleagues tomorrow morning and we’ll look at what’s possible and is there an ability to use existing legislation from other jurisdictions modified to the northern reality and not have to do this from scratch to see what’s possible. Thank you.

A full briefing on both these particular pieces of legislation has been offered to committee and the folks stand ready to sit down with committee to be able to go through in detail both pieces of legislation, the amendments to the Dog Act as well as the new legislation and the work that the working committee has done. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, I wish to advise Members that the Honourable Floyd Roland will be absent from the House today and tomorrow to attend a meeting of provincial and territorial Ministers of Aboriginal Affairs and leaders of national aboriginal organizations in Toronto, Ontario. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I believe there will be an opportunity tomorrow night with the meeting of the Rural and Remote communities to look at that as one of the possible options for recommendation. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, the Member’s question of whether we have confidence that we will be able to carry out the projects, of course we have confidence in our staff. We will have to qualify that by stating that this past year and this year coming has produced a large number of projects, a very large budget, probably the biggest budget in our department’s history, and it’s really put a strain on our staff to deliver them. But we’re quite pleased to state that 80-plus percent of our projects that are on our books are either at the tender stage or are in the actual construction stage. So we will probably...

I wish to table the following document entitled the Department of Finance: Strategic Action Plan 2009-2012. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

As the Minister from ITI has pointed out, there were meetings held with the mines -- BHP, Diavik and De Beers -- about the MOU. One of the best ways is going to be what the mines have committed to doing, which is limiting the incentives for flying south. The pickup points are only going to be in the North, keeping in mind, then, that it’s going to be the responsibility of communities that are going to be possibly places where these folks will stay. They have to make sure that they have housing available should these folks that fly in say that now they are prepared to live in the North, be it...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We are committed to bringing forward a proposal for a heritage fund. We know that from some quarters there is an interest in a resource tax. We have indicated that we’re looking at tax shifting at this point, given that we’re still in a recession that while there are some weak signs of recovery, it’s not clear that we’re on the way out and that we don’t have anything further to worry about. But we have committed, as a result of our roundtable, to do work on a resource tax, and look at the feedback we’ve received and put a discussion paper out there so that we could...

Mr. Speaker, I seek consent to proceed with the second reading of Bill 1, An Act to Amend the Petroleum Products Tax Act.