Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will make a few comments on this bill. Mr. Chairman, I have always supported the Minister of Finance in his initiatives and in his hard work in order to steer the government fiscally through these rough times. There was a time in the last Assembly, Mr. Chairman, that I had urged the then Minister responsible to take a good look at ways of making sure that people who came into the territories to earn money paid their fair share. I was told at the time that it would be impossible to do, or next to impossible to do, and consequently nothing was done. As a result, nothing did get done. People continue to earn money and leave without any net benefit to the territories, through taxation. We live and work here 12 months of the year and we end up paying for all the services which we do.
I was initially in favour of the payroll tax when it came out in its initial form. That, Mr. Chairman, was where the net would be cast to all tax payers in the territories and at the end of the year, tax time, the net would be cleaned out and those fish that lived in the territories would be set free and those that were not here would end up paying. Somewhere along the way, Mr. Chairman, it turned out that this net did not allow for many of the tax payers to be set free of this, albeit, small tax. This is where I think the Minister and his initiatives, and I, have a parting of the way. The initial concept, yes, where people who earned money in the territories would end up paying some but when the northerners would end up paying even a small amount, I could not support. I hoped that we would have been able to find a way around it. I only learned a little bit more about it in the last few days. It turns out that people will be getting some money back. That bothered me, as well, Mr. Chairman, because some people who will not even pay into it will end up getting some back. That is not fair. Mr. Lewis said that we will put money back into the pockets of the poor, but this is going to put money back into the pockets of people who do not even pay into it. If we end up paying out money what is the real net benefit of this.
There are a number of things which are flawed in this. There are initial flaws in this bill which beg for further review and some consultation on that. I too, would have preferred, if this bill had been deferred until a later time to be dealt with, rather than now. Mr. Chairman, there is a time when you take direction from your constituents on some things and you weigh the odds and their input, and some times as one of the Members said, you just have to hold your nose and vote against your constituents wishes. Mr. Chairman, I have spent a great deal of time talking to people about it. While it may be true that no one wants to pay more taxes, and if you ask them if you would agree to pay taxes, 95 per cent of them will say no. Many people without even being asked that have said this. Of the people who I represent, there was one exception who support this. Only one person of a large number. I represent, I think, the largest constituency by population. If they all stood up and said yes vote for it, it would be great. I have not heard but one person supporting this. I would have my feet tied to the fire if I turned and supported something like this against their wishes.
There is a great deal of heat dumped on Yellowknife. People say we are all rich. This maybe true that people do earn a good buck in Yellowknife but do not forget that we pay high taxes in this community, and we pay for many of the services which we get. To add, even one more per cent, when other people are not going to be paying, I think is totally unfair and this is why I will stand up in defence of those persons, in saying that this is not the proper time for this.
Again, I go back to the initial concept of this which I initially had supported. That changed somewhere along the way. It turns out that it is going to catch more people then I would like to see. I was going to abstain from voting so that it would allow the government to carry out some of its financial initiatives. However, Mr. Chairman, that would not be fair, and therefore I am going to say now that I will not support this. I would like to see it deferred until a later time where perhaps I can go back and consult with people and point out some of the positive things. At this point in time, I have to go on record and say that I will not support this bill for the reasons I have stated. Thank you.