Thank you, Madam Speaker. Today, Madam Speaker, I want to talk about taxation, specifically about the home owners' property tax rebate. In the early 1980s, the former Minister of MACA, James Wah-Shee, brought in the home owners' property tax rebate. It was the first time the Government of the Northwest Territories very vocally and very strongly supported home ownership. That was the beginning of a long-standing commitment of this government towards home ownership. In those days, municipal taxation in Yellowknife was somewhere between $1,000 and $2,000 for average taxation and so $400 was a very considerable percentage of that.

Well, that amount has eroded over the years and the taxation level has doubled. The actual impact of that $400 has halved over that period of time. I found it actually quite incredible last year that the government spent probably one third of their time in oral questions responding to questions about staff housing and supporting the concept of home ownership, yet last year they cut the rebate from $400 to $300.