Thank you, Mr. Speaker-elect. We heard during the campaign that cost of living is affecting people in negative ways here in the Northwest Territories, so we need to be cautious about increasing the cost of living and, therefore, cautious about raising taxes.
There are a couple of areas that we can explore, raising luxury taxes on things like tobacco and liquor, but that won't bring in significant money. It will bring in some but it won't bring in significant dollars, but it is certainly something that we can look at. As a matter of fact, we used to have the highest rates on tobacco, until about six months ago when Manitoba actually creeped ahead of us, so I'd like to be number one in that category again.
But if we really want to increase our revenues, we need to get our people working. As I indicated earlier, we have a large number of individuals 18 to 24 who don't even consider themselves to be part of the workforce here in the Northwest Territories. Many of those people are receiving some degree or some level of support. If we can get those individuals working through strategic, focused training on a diversified economy - on farming, fishing, renewable technologies, those types of things - we can get them working in the communities. They can be the experts in the communities to deliver these particular programs; they'll be off income support and they'll be paying taxes. We need to focus on getting those people to work, to help increase our revenues and decrease our expenses as a government. Thank you, Mr. Speaker-elect.