Thank you, Mr. Chairman. With all due respect to the Member who moved this amendment, it doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I see it as defeating the purpose of the bill. If you allow people to bring in 1,000 cigarettes three times a year, that is 3,000 cigarettes. Even if a person smokes around ten cigarettes a day, that is 300 days of free smoking without paying taxes to the territorial government and that doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

We should encourage people to pay the tax in the Northwest Territories. We should encourage our people to buy their cigarettes in the Northwest Territories. Any place else, a carton of cigarettes is a lot of cigarettes to bring back, anyway. I know that in my riding the majority of the people I represent don't have the luxury of going south either. We don't have that luxury. I know civil servants get their way south paid once a year but the majority of my people don't work for the government and they don't go south for holidays or to buy cigarettes.

This would make a loophole in this legislation and it is basically a loophole for the elite, the people who can afford to go south and the people who can afford to pay taxes in the Northwest Territories. It would make it a loophole so that they could get cigarettes cheaper. I won't support this amendment and I would encourage Members not to support this amendment.

---Applause

We all know who smokes, and I'm one of them. I smoke heavily. I'll pay the taxes in the Northwest Territories, just like all the other Members in this House should as well who smoke. Thank you.