Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, it's quite obvious that I am standing up in support of this motion. Mr. Speaker, this harmonization initiative was flawed from start to finish. Actually, I don't see a finish, as Mr. Lafferty had indicated. There are lots of problems with this. It doesn't provide any dignity or respect for those clients who are in public housing and income support. It's definitely providing dignity and respect for those people on income support. It's intrusive to individuals and the decisions they have to make. I would argue that, Mr. Speaker, it goes against the fabric of our society and our communities. When you are forcing people to squeal on one another because of income support or through public housing rental scales on income, all income, every income, it's not good public policy, in my opinion. Mr. Speaker, it's these kinds of policies that stir bad relations between communities and this government, a policy that obviously was not well thought out, not communicated to our communities, to our frontline deliverers of our programs and services, our leaders, our people in public housing.

When a person doesn't know how much rent he's going to pay next month, how do you expect him to plan for that month? There's no security there. There's no partnership with aboriginal governments. These types of policies, when you don't provide options with these policies, the option I am talking about, Mr. Speaker, is where is the employment? Where is the employment in those communities? Where are the government jobs in those communities? When you ask them to go on income support and tell them to explain every last cent they got last month so we could charge them additional rent or a cheque to you this month based on your last month's income, there is no dignity there and there are no options there.

Yesterday, in Committee of the Whole, I got the Minister of RWED to identify all the positions of his department in each community. Ninety percent of those jobs are in regional centres or in Yellowknife. One or two jobs in communities. That's very much representative of the entire government. So when this government starts making policies that's going to make it difficult to live in those communities, what happens? People don't get off income support. Therefore, our statistics go down. They move to regional centres, they move outside of communities. That affects the financial relationship of this government in those communities. Transfer dollars based on population is a reality in this government and those communities, because a loss of population will get reduced transfer payments making it more difficult for those communities to deliver other programs and services. It also has a major impact on representation in this House. The Constitution of Canada states, and it's protected by a court decision in the NWT, that tells us how many people are in this House and representation. Now you see why there are only a few of us on this side of the House that represent a large number of communities in the NWT when there is a large group of MLAs representing three communities. The numbers are not there. The numbers are lopsided, to say the least.

These kinds of policies will contribute to that. The more people who leave our smaller communities and move into the capital of the Territories and regional centres, the less seats we will have in our smaller communities, more seats in this room, we will see more of these policies that are incentive to the smaller communities. Even in the city, I am getting a lot of calls from people in the city. People are writing me letters saying how this is going to negatively impact them. Some of them are government employees. Their options are to quit and go on income support, quit and leave the city or leave the territory. Is this the kind of policy we want as a government, forcing people to quit their jobs and leave the North? This kind of policy doesn't encourage people to find short-term jobs in their communities and those types of jobs are the only type we seem to get in those communities, short-term seasonal jobs such as forestry and firefighting.

This policy obviously has not considered that. This policy is supposed to encourage employment. How can you encourage employment when as soon as you start working, you are going to get an increase in your rent?

So, Mr. Speaker, I encourage my colleagues in this House to really look at this policy. It may be beneficial to maybe 60 percent of their constituency, but the other 40 percent will suffer. If that is the kind of government we are going to have and those kinds of decisions we are going to make based on those jobs, then we are in trouble. If 40 percent of the population is going to suffer, then that's not good policy, that's not good government. I think we should delay this by one year so we could have a closer look at it. Make some major adjustments and reintroduce it, if necessary, next year at this time by the 15th Assembly. Let's give them that mandate. Let's not take the 13th Assembly's mandate and something that was designed in 1995. Do you think it still works today?

I don't think so. I asked the Ministers questions on consultation. A lot of people who are consulted are no longer in those positions. The question is how much has changed in this policy since those people were consulted. If this is still a working draft, then I imagine there are changes that will be made and if we consulted on the colour white and we say we are going to introduce something that's white and by the time the introduction time comes and it's yellow, Mr. Speaker, then that's not what we consulted on.