Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and good afternoon. Mr. Speaker, several years ago we did look at giving tax holidays and making a better environment for business and so forth. But the truth of the matter is, Mr. Speaker, we did not find at that time that we were going to attract more businesses to the Northwest Territories because there were less taxes or fees to be paid here, with the exception that there were a number of companies prepared to act as investors of funds. I believe we have one in Yellowknife already. A lot of paper travels back and forth and electronic transfer of funds. There are some gains to be made for those companies participating and, of course, there are some advantages in jobs and so forth.

But we found those to be fairly small and the economic advantage to us to be almost unnoticeable compared to if there was to be some large-scale mining activity, the fur industry was to come back, or if we were able to create some manufacturing jobs. At that particular point in time, we did not pursue giving greater benefits in tax areas or lesser licensing fees to companies in order to stimulate economic development. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.