Robert Hawkins

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It gives me great pleasure to introduce to the Assembly Elder Samuel George and Elder Jeff Anderson. They are missionaries doing good work in our community. My wife and I have had the pleasure to get to know them while they are here. Elder George is from Utah, I believe, and Elder Anderson is from Idaho, if I am correct. Anyway, they are here to do good work in our community.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I said yesterday, the problem with this government is it has a spending problem, not a revenue problem, and it continues to be obvious more so even today. I only wish there were a program like the Tree of Peace to send the Finance Minister to, to make sure he understands that, but we don’t.

So it’s about time this government realizes that you could lower the cost of living in government and do business better at the same time without raising taxes. We need someone over there on that Cabinet side of this building to understand that we don’t need new taxes.

Again, Mr...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’d just like to seek clarification from the Minister. It was difficult to hear him. I wasn’t sure if he said that the surplus could be spent on something other than the fire suppression.

Memory may not serve me correctly, but for some reason I seem to recall that we’ve gone to a special warrant process for the last five years that I’ve been in the Assembly. Has there been a supplementary appropriation to pick up the shortfall every year for the last five years? Would the Minister be able to tell me that? Am I correct?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’ve cited a number of times under forest management that the department should take the initiative and start creating some type of revolving fund, knowing that quite often we go over budget in this area and we keep coming back to the Assembly and topping that up. I realize we’re paying what one could describe as actuals, but I’d certainly like to see the department investigate a process or that we start funding forest management properly so they don’t have to keep coming back each year.

I say that with the proviso that it’s reasonable to understand that some years are...

I’ve read those numbers very closely in the five years I’ve been here, and I notice the one thing that sticks out very evidently is that there’s no tax stabilization policy that levelizes our taxes, sets some aside for the rainy day and certainly is there on the good days. What is this Minister doing to help levelize and stabilize our tax policies that will help so that when big business decides to file somewhere else, it doesn’t cause a crumble like it did in our last budget?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This government is flirting with a trend to encourage business as well as people to leave. We’ve all heard about the silo of government, and I am just curious. I’m just trying to get a sense. Does the Finance Minister, Minister Miltenberger, understand that there is a cost of living committee out there?

My question to the Minister of Finance is: how do his potential tax initiatives dovetail with the cost of living committee, which is intended to lower the cost of living of the average citizen up here? How does it dovetail? Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, let me give this Finance Minister a lesson. If we encouraged 2,000 people to our territory, that would cover our shortfall. By the way, that means 60 people per community. We can encourage a grow with the North policy, as opposed to taxing them to death. Let’s start on some of those migrant workers, as has been articulated clearly here.

In closing, the financial gaps are big; imagination is low. As one person told me yesterday, it’s time that we start showing some backbone with some mineral tax instead of milk tax. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Why aren’t bonuses tied to rate increases? In other words, if rate increases keep going up, why do bonuses keep going up? Why do bonuses keep getting awarded?

I didn’t really hear the answer. I heard that if the rate rider they want doesn’t get approved, it has to be taken back. It’s seen as a shell game that appears as if it went down, but it didn’t. My question really is, once again: have the actual base rates, including the riders, et cetera, over the long term actually gone up or gone down?