Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Because we have no history in this, we really have to work on estimates. So it is very much based on our own estimates, our own surveys, our access to Stats Canada information. That is the best information we have to work with.

We will do everything we can to be as accurate and as tight as we possibly can. I have confidence in my people in Finance, who have the expertise in these things, that they will do it very well. If anything, just to be on the safe side, then we are airing on the conservative side and we are not going out wild in terms of our projections.

I think our department can do a good job of being reasonably accurate. Thank you.

Mr. Miltenberger.

Mr. Handley.

Mr. Chairman, I guess the challenge that we have in doing that is if we take education boards, for example, not many of the education board employees, teachers, travel as part of their job. A high percentage do not. The superintendent travels, a few specialists travel, the board travels, but we would have to go to every education board, every health board, and so on, to work that out.

I think there is a misconception that government people are out there traveling all the time and all the hotels are full. That is not the case. Most employees, including board employees, are in occupations where they pretty much are in the community, not doing a lot of traveling, except for their vacation. Thank you.

Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I suppose, at this point, given the lack of data, that is an assumption, since nobody can speak one way or the other to that. The Minister, on the front page, takes some very big numbers and makes some very broad assumptions; 60 percent in the west, 'x' number here, 'x' number there. All I am suggesting is rather than leave out that big chunk of the population of the government employees, in that chunk of the government's travel budget, they should make the same kind of broad assumption to include them.

You can decide how you will, what that would be, but it is not the same. If you look at their budgets, just pick a figure for the sake of being conservative and assume, like you do here, you round things off. You take big percentages and carve them in two. Do the same, is all I am suggesting, and that is my one big criticism of this tax at this point. Just from a procedural point of view and an equation point of view, there seems to be a chunk missing.

So I am not asking you to go count every health board, I am suggesting you do the same thing you did so far. Take the big percentages, and make some assumptions. If you are going to err on the side of safety, do not overlook that portion of the budget. Thank you.

Mr. Handley.

Mr. Chairman, we will undertake to be as accurate as we can in doing this. The amount that we have included here for duty travel, the $1.5 million to $2 million, is based on actual duty travel that people have to report as government employees. When we start bringing in the board travels, it becomes more and more of an estimate.

I understand what the Member is saying and I will undertake to do the best we can, given the information that we have, to be as accurate as possible. Thank you.

Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you. That is all, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I ran out of time just after getting into the fuel tax issue with the Minister and I asked him earlier if he would consider implementing a per litre tax that was equal to the Yukon or Nunavut as opposed to what we now have. He said, at the time, that because of our deficit situation, he did not feel it was right to commit to lower taxes equal to those in the Yukon or Nunavut. In the media over the past few days, and in responses to Members just recently in this House, since our exchange earlier, I have heard him talking about the possibility of cutting personal and corporate taxes because of cuts in Ontario and Alberta. Why would we consider cutting taxes because Alberta and Ontario have lower taxes than we do, but not because Nunavut and the Yukon have lower taxes than we do?

Minister of Finance.

Mr. Chairman, we really do have to keep in mind our competitive position with the other jurisdictions across Canada. I think the fuel tax that we collect is really quite competitive with elsewhere in the country. When I talk about the need to be competitive and the need to possibly lower taxes, I am talking about a much broader picture than that.

For example, if Alberta has a 10.5 flat tax, we have to stay competitive with Alberta in personal income tax and the same with corporate taxes. The broader cost of doing business here. It may be possible in the future, as we look at this whole issue of competitiveness with the rest of Canada, that fuel taxes could be factored in there. At this point I am not prepared to change our tax on fuel to match the effect of Nunavut's because they do not have a highway, or match the Yukon's and do that one in isolation. We have to look at the big picture and look at the competitiveness. It might be better to lower personal income tax. That may be a fairer way of doing it. That gives everyone who is working an income benefit, maybe more fair to do a tax credit increase. Those are options we have to look at. I am not closing the door to this forever I am just saying that I could not see changing the fuel tax today. Thank you.

Mr. Dent.

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.

Mr. Handley

Mr. Chairman, the only thing I could say is that there is an awful lot of speculation of where this tax is going to come from, from a lot of people. I think we need, through the consultation process, more time to do some research to figure out exactly where the tax is going to come from. I anticipate that if we are successful in our plan to invest in tourism and to have more tourists here, more will come from tourist pockets. In terms of reallocation, I cannot say much. It is easy to say that but at the same time we can only reallocate so many ways and eventually things start to break apart. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. General comments. Just a reminder to Members we are not allowed to flash placards or notes, which is a form of influence. Detail. On page 3-9, directorate, operation expense, total operations expense, $1,112,000.

Agreed? Treasury, operation expense, total operations expense, $7,431,000. Mr. Roland.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Can the Minister inform us as to what are the projections of the interest rates? In his opening comments, he referred to an increase to pay for increased borrowing costs. Is there a projection here knowing our situation?

Again, the Minister is saying that one of the other areas is going to receive our borrowing limit raised, and that will only add to this. So right now, what is the projection of the department? Thank you.

Mr. Handley