Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think the advice is good. We do want to have a balance between focusing on finding out where our payroll tax is not being paid, in whole or in part, collecting that payroll tax and then getting on to other things we need to do in terms of audits and other functions.

The balance between that and charging interest and spending a lot of time collecting a little bit of money from a few people who may not be paying their interest, as I said, we have not found any big violators. The ones we are finding are generally smaller in size and usually, they are willing to do a correction of their books and pay us what they owe us. We want to balance that with a punitive side.

We are, Mr. Chairman, committed to doing a fairly thorough spot audit on a larger company in the Territories within the next months, just to assess whether or not that company or sub-contractors working in that situation may be ducking out, see what the example is there.

So far, we are not finding and we do not believe there is a lot of payroll tax being lost. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Handley. Mr. Bell.

I thank the Minister for that response and I would certainly expect that it probably is some of the smaller employers that we may be missing. I am not suggesting we get all crazy and bent out of shape about chasing around a few dollars that the small employers may not be remitting, but I do think if we are going to do this and we are going to have a payroll tax, maybe we make it something slightly more substantial so that we can in fact generate some revenue from these fly-in/fly-out operations who are operating in the North, possibly employing southerners and leaving, and the money does not revolve in the North. Let's take a stab at getting some of this money.

I agree. We do not want to chase down a few bucks from small employers. Let's make it a few more bucks and chase it down from southern employers who are taking advantage of our lack of initiative in setting up something more substantial.

Thank you, Mr. Bell. Mr. Handley.

Mr. Chairman, particularly if the preliminary census information is verified and we find that there are a larger number of fly-in/fly-out kind of operations who are not paying their taxes and living here, then we really have to reconsider our 1 percent payroll tax and whether it is doing what it was meant to do. I am open to that. Certainly it will be influenced by what we find out on the census information.

Thank you, Mr. Handley. General comments?

We are on page 3-9, directorate, operations expense, total operations expense, $1,185,000.

Page 3-11, treasury, operations expense, total operations expense, $5,251,000.

Page 3-15, fiscal policy, operations expense, total operations expense, $770,000.

Page 3-17, Bureau of Statistics, operations expense, total operations expense, $560,000. Mr. Roland.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the committee raised an issue with the Minister, and the Minister did agree that in the Northwest Territories, we need to start making more use of northern firms. The committee is concerned to start to try and make more use of our own Bureau of Statistics. In light of the recent census from the federal government and their numbers, I think much concern has been raised by yourself and ourselves here. For example, looking at those numbers, I know Inuvik has not dropped to the number they have. I do not think we have been that low since the 1970s.

It is much of a concern and emphasizes the fact that we are going to need to do something that we can counter, I guess, what the federal government would do and say, are their numbers accurate? In this area, is there going to be an increase to try and make more use of our own Northern professionals? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Roland. Mr. Handley.

Mr. Chairman, as I mentioned in a Minister's statement a couple of days ago, we are asking the Stats Canada people to do a complete review of all communities in the Northwest Territories and to include our people in the review. If we are not successful with that, we really have to look at the way statistics are collected in the North generally and get much harder, much firmer with Ottawa that it is necessary to do it with Northerners. I am getting a lot of antidotal information from people who are telling me their stories about why they did not fill out the census form and so on over the last few days.

There is a lot of scepticism when southern people come north and start asking a lot of questions. Some people are just throwing the forms away. We will see how we can work with Statistics Canada. We want to work with them. They do provide a valuable service to us but we have to have a better way of getting our bureau and northern people involved in this process. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Handley. Mr. Roland.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Does the Minister see that in this area, we would be looking to increase our own staff or the amount of statistics that we gather, or the frequency of that? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Roland. Mr. Handley.

Yes, Mr. Chairman. If we find the information that Statistics Canada is collecting is inaccurate or inadequate, then we would be considering coming back, either through the business planning process or, if necessary, if it is urgent, as a supp to get some more resources for us to be able to do it better ourselves. We cannot continue on with information that is highly questionable.

Thank you, Mr. Handley. Mr. Roland.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. That is all in this area. Thank you.

Ms. Lee.