Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I guess I would just point out that reducing the fuel tax will have more of an impact on the cost of living on people in the smaller communities than will typically reducing the personal and corporate income taxes. Earlier today, we heard Mr. Nitah talking about the economic benefits are not being felt in other areas. This would be an opportunity to reduce the cost of living in those areas if we were to bring that tax down as opposed to the personal income tax and the corporate tax. This would impact on those hunters, trappers and fishermen who are probably not too dramatically impacted by cuts in personal income tax or corporate tax. I will leave that for another day, Mr. Chairman.
I would just like to go back to briefly comment on the proposed hotel tax. During the campaign for election, I was asked one straight forward question quite often and that was, would I support the imposition of a sales tax? Mr. Chairman, I said no. A rose by any other name is still a rose. This so-called hotel tax is nothing more than a sales tax. It may be limited in its application but what is to stop it. If a million dollars is not enough this year, what is to stop us next year? Let us add to it. Let us tax fishing licenses. Let us tax airline seats. Sooner, rather than later, I am worried that we are going to have a full blown sales tax here in the Northwest Territories.
The Minister admitted that it was a sales tax in his response to Ms. Lee, when he said this was not a tax on operators. It would come out of the pockets of the tourists. I am not convinced it will be only the tourists that he is referring to. I think he means southern tourists when he says that. As I pointed out earlier, it will also impact people from smaller communities who travel to Inuvik, Hay River, Yellowknife, to accompany their relatives who have to seek medical attention in those communities. Obviously, Mr. Handley was not asked the same question about a sales tax during the campaign, because I cannot believe that he would have agreed at the time not to bring in a sales tax and then bring this one forward.
In responding to Ms. Lee, he said that he was prepared to listen to suggestions about where we could get this money. I have to say that, Mr. Chairman, Ms. Lee is right. At the end of the day, we will find that much of the new money that we bring in with this tax, is in fact a reallocation from departments because of travel by government employees or funded agencies of this government.
Again, during the campaign, I was asked how would you get more money into the promotion of tourism? That was one of the things that I said I wanted to see. Quite clearly during the campaign, I said that I would like to see a reallocation of dollars within Resources Wildlife and Economic Development. So whether it takes a reallocation of the $7.6 million that we have in trade and investment or whether it takes some of the money that we have otherwise allocated to the Northwest Territories Development Corporation, the net amount of money that we are going to realize from this tax is not big enough to go through the hassle of setting it up. I encourage the Minister to reconsider and to invest in tourism by finding monies from within to reallocate. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.