Mr. Speaker, since I was first elected in 1987 I have always used every opportunity to represent the people that elected me, and I will do so briefly today, bearing in mind that we would like to get finished sometime tomorrow. Mr. Speaker, first of all I would like to thank the people of Yellowknife Centre for sending me back to public life, where I have spent most of my time in the Territories; in fact, the vast bulk of my life has been devoted to public service, and I would like to thank them for returning me to continue the work that I began in 1987. I would like to particularly thank my wife and family, who worked very, very hard.
I would also like to point out that in this instance the electorate had a tremendous variety of choices, and I feel honoured that among the choices they had, they decided to give me another crack at this kind of work.
City Of Yellowknife Revenue
The two issues that I wanted to raise today, Mr. Speaker, relate in a sense to public service and the problems that people have in coping with the modern world, and I will be very brief. I would like to point out that because of the tremendous demands made on government, the City of Yellowknife now finds itself in a position where it is no longer able to provide the kinds of transfers that enables the City to survive without trying to find some extra ways of raising revenue within the city. I have learned within the last two months that, for example, the churches within the city, who were previously told that as long as they notified the proper values, and so on, that this amount would be written off. For example, if the Anglican Church was rated at $12,000 for property taxes, that would be written off. I am told that all those non-profit agencies within the city can expect next year to have only 25 per cent of that amount written off. This would place a very powerful burden on such institutions as the Salvation Army, Mr. Speaker. They have a 35 year mortgage on the pink palace that is halfway down the hill here, that provides a very valued service within this community. If you have to pay off a mortgage of about $90,000 a year and you are now told that in addition to that kind of burden you can no longer expect to have the relief on your property taxes that you got in the past, then that means that that institution has very severe financial problems that it is going to have to cope with over the next few years, and no amount of belt-tightening is going to allow that institution to survive unless we realistically look at the impact that these various cuts are going to have on community services.
Property Tax For Disabled
The second issue I would like to raise, Mr. Speaker, relates to the Senior Citizens and Disabled Persons Property Tax Relief Act which we passed a year ago, with the good intention of allowing people who have disabilities to have some form of relief from paying property taxes, simply because they were disabled people who did not work, and so on.
When we look at that particular act, what we did was to include all kinds of other categories, not only the permanently disabled, but those people who have been injured in the workplace or have been off work for a month, or whatever. We wanted to be fair and look at all the possibilities. But what has happened, Mr. Speaker, is in the case of the City of Yellowknife, instead of just simply saying that this is a reasonable piece of legislation, it allows us to give relief to these people that really should get relief, but we cannot afford it -- if we look at all the people that potentially will be disabled to some degree and we decide to relieve those people of paying taxes, we really cannot afford to run this City. We are afraid of the burden that this would place on us.
So I am urging the government to look at that piece of legislation, to narrow it a little, so that those people who really need to get tax relief get it and the City cannot use the argument that the large numbers who are only partially disabled, or disabled for a small period of time, would cause them real difficulty.
Those were the two main issues I wanted to raise today, Mr. Speaker. I noted that on our calendar provided by Scotiabank, there are all kinds of wonderful little comments at the top of them. For example, "No problem can stand the assault of sustained thinking." If I had about four or five hours, I could go through many of these things and relate them to performance of the government and some of the things that they should be thinking of as they take on their responsibilities and get to learn them and to sustain them for the next four years.
I am committed to our new Government Leader to make sure that she survives the four years. We made that choice; we will make sure it works as best as we can. I wish everybody all the best. I would like to thank everybody for listening to me for the shortest address I have made to this House.
---Applause