Mr. Chairman, there have been some discussions with the federal government about a different way of doing things and it has been suggested by the provinces. We have looked at it, but when Mr. Todd gets up, like last week when he announced that BHP is very close to a decision with regard to a mine in the Northwest Territories and said there will be 1,000 construction jobs, and if we fill 50 per cent of those jobs from people in the Northwest Territories, I guess we will think ourselves lucky. If you look at the number of people that are travelling through Hay River, right now, who are resident elsewhere in Canada and working at Colomac Mines, and if the diamond mines come on stream and you are looking at 600 or 700 employees, 350 of which may be commuting back and forth from southern Canada, if we change this system of tax that we have put in place to get some payment from
those people who are residing elsewhere, then we may not be able to get those people .
So I think that, yes, people have complained about the payroll tax, but the payroll taxes that you hear people complaining about in other provinces are the payroll taxes that are placed upon the employer, not on the employee. I think employees are starting to see that they will get some of those funds back. If you are a low income earner, you will get more back than you paid in. If you are high income earner, you will get back a little less than you paid in.
We still have to watch out for the fact that there are a number of people in the Northwest Territories, that number is increasing and will increase if we get major developments here, who are working here, earning a living here and residing elsewhere and thus paying taxes elsewhere. That was the reason that I brought in the tax in the first place. If we change to some other tax, we may miss those people, Mr. Chairman.