Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I listened with interest to the budget speech from the Yukon this week. In that jurisdiction they found it necessary to raise taxes and, like our government, they are favoured because they do not have a huge deficit to worry about. Whenever you deliver government programs, the money has to come from somewhere. People have to get the idea that anything they ask for has to be paid for and it is their money that pays for it through the tax regime.
We have faced the same kind of problem here, but we do not have a party system, we have consensus government, which means that any individual here who does not want to vote for something because it will make him or her unpopular, will not do so. It puts our own government at a tremendous disadvantage compared to other governments. It is very difficult to get unpopular legislation through any assembly. For example, in my constituency, by voting for a tax measure, I will automatically be considered to be out of sync with the people I represent.
The tax we have in front of us to deal with very soon is a payroll tax and for many of the people I represent it seems rather "cute." An attempt to get us to pay taxes by pretending to tax people who live somewhere else. My own guess is if we were more straightforward with the public and say if they want service someone has to pay for it, we would just simply make an adjustment so the tax which we impose on people is very clearly designed to provide the level of service people are asking for. Thank you.