Wendy Bisaro

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and thanks to the Minister for his comments. I have to respectfully disagree. I don’t think that we have to raise revenues through taxes. There are other options that are available to us, and some of those options were suggested in the summaries from the roundtable.

So I’d like to know from the Minister, other than looking at taxes, has the department looked at other options to increase our revenue sources, such as resource rents, for instance. Thank you.

Thank you to the Minister. I attended the discussion and the presentation in Yellowknife and I found it very interesting, and the Minister is right that there were some interesting discussions and some interesting ideas that were brought up there. One of the things that was mentioned at the meeting here in Yellowknife was that there was no reference at all to revenue in the budget presentation, and in the documents and in the discussions that were held that night. So I’d like to ask the Minister if he can explain why there was no discussion and no consideration of new revenues in the budget at...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It gives me great pleasure again to welcome Jeff Corradetti to the House. Welcome, Jeff. You’re making a habit of this.

Thank you, Minister Abernethy. Committee, are there any general comments in regard to Bill 8? Is committee agreed we go to detail?

I appreciate the Minister’s response that there’s some money being allocated. It has been allocated, as he’s said though, in 2013-2014. In my mind, that’s a problem. I don’t understand why, with the report that came out some four or five months ago now, we couldn’t start some planning in this budget year, 2012-2013, to do some implementation in 2013-2014. I’d ask the Minister to tell me why we can’t do planning this year for implementation in the next budget year.

Is committee agreed to bring witnesses into the House?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It’s my pleasure to recognize a constituent from Frame Lake, Jeff Corradetti. Welcome to the House to Jeff and to everybody else up there. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister Abernethy. I’ll now go to the chair of the Standing Committee on Social Programs, who reviewed Bill 8, to the chair, Mr. Moses, for his opening comments. Thank you.

Thank you, committee. Does committee agree that Bill 2, Miscellaneous Statute Law Amendment Act, 2012, is now ready for third reading?

---Bill 2 as a whole approved for third reading

Okay, committee. We are dealing with Bill 2. We will defer the title of the bill until after we have done clause by clause. We are on page 1, clause 1.

---Clauses 1 through 19 inclusive approved