Thank you, Madam Chair. Before I get into that specific issue, there were a number of comments the Member made about our revenue-generating initiatives. Yes, they are difficult and nobody likes the idea of increased taxes or new taxes, but if we don't get it from the corporate citizens of the NWT or Canada, then we end up focussing on the private individual which would be much more difficult.
The fact is the federal government measures our tax effort and because we are not measuring up to what they think we can generate for revenue in the Northwest Territories, we are penalized on that. So we have to take some steps in that area to ensure that we are going to protect the revenue base that we do have. It's not a good thing. As I stated earlier, it's not something I came into the job looking at as a target, but it is part of the puzzle we have to put together in trying to move forward and protect the programs we have for residents in the territory.
On the administration side of it, because these are existing programs, there are no increases in the administration. The federal government collects the taxes for us and remits them back to us. It would be a different case if we did that all on our own, but because the federal government does that for us it lessens the impact of administration.
On the specific question of insurance premiums, it is an area where we have been hit hard. As I have stated, we reduced our loss record over the last number of years, but our premiums were still jumping significantly. So there was an exercise done to see what we can do to mitigate those costs. We've identified a savings of $1.6 million, but from that $1.6 million, we are taking $330,000 and reinvesting it in the area of risk management. To achieve that level of savings, we've had to increase our own
deductible. We've increased it a significant amount and by doing that, we have to now make sure we are managing and ensuring that our risk loss control measures are adequate so we don't end up losing a lot of our facilities. So we've had to step it up on that side, but we've seen that as an ongoing savings. We just need to make sure we have the right monitoring in place so we don't lose out and end up paying our own deductible if we don't take care of our facilities.