Thank you, Madam Chair. I did not have a chance to make my general comments, so I will preface my question with a few general - not a ten minute monologue as Member from the hinterlands is suggesting, but I just wanted to indicate that I do support the business incentive policy. I have talked to some people, not as many as I wanted to. Several people that I did contact did not get back to me after they had time to think about it. The general consensus of the people I spoke to was that the paperwork that is required is too extensive and that tracking this present policy and the rest is a lot of work. I get the feeling that a lot of the people in the larger communities feel that they could do away with it or lower it but that the smaller companies, smaller communities definitely feel that it should remain in place. I am talking about basically, the contracting, construction area. At this point, as I said I do not think it should be done away with. We still do need to assist our businesses to ensure that they remain in business and to assist new companies coming on board to exist and not go under right away. I think that I had a good suggestion from one of the people I spoke to and he indicated that he thought if the BIP remains in a similar way as it is today which is to give certain percentages over and above southern or people who do not qualify under the BIP to - if we are going to leave it the same, or similar, that only people who pay their income tax or companies that pay their income tax in the Northwest Territories should be eligible for the 15 and 20 percent exemption or if it changes, whatever. I also got the indication that probably people could live with a 5 percent reduction, so that it would be 10 and 15 percent. I also believe that there should be a way to get rid of this extensive paperwork and tracking to include it into that lowered reduction and I would suggest that we could try this for a year and see how it affects our businesses up here. If we are starting to lose contracts to organizations that are not really northern businesses then perhaps put it back to the way it was or whatever. My first question for the Minister is, he had indicated that we had an exemption from the, I believe it was NAFTA, I suppose, from a trade agreement. My question is, what happens if we change the BIP, do we still retain that exemption status?
Roy Erasmus on Item 19: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
In the Legislative Assembly on February 11th, 1997. See this statement in context.
Item 19: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
Item 19: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
February 10th, 1997
Page 547
Roy Erasmus Yellowknife North
See context to find out what was said next.