Thank you, Madam Chair. There are a number of avenues that we will take and use to get the information to people and continue to provide them with the information to ensure that they feel that they're getting all that is required to understand our situation. I think that started in a large way yesterday by doing the budget address and highlighting that message to our people in the Territories of the impacts of what this budget means to them. As we go through this process in the next two-and-half weeks, as Members ask questions of departments and ask for the detail, that information then can flow through this process, with the media, through phone calls to people back home.
I agree; it's the bread-and-butter issues that people are worried about. It's not the fancy documents or the Bill 1 Appropriation Act that really means something to them. What it means to them is, at the end of the day when they sit down at the supper table, they can still afford to feed their children, still afford to pay their bills. That's something that we've taken and considered as our first step in this process, is to try to mitigate the impacts on residents in the Northwest Territories. For example, as I've mentioned in the payroll tax, we're increasing the payroll tax but we're also adjusting the two lowest brackets to reduce the impact on residents in the Northwest Territories, especially those with incomes lower than $66,000. As well, we are increasing the cost-of-living tax credit through that process, again to minimize the impact on those with low incomes in the Northwest Territories. We looked at a number of other initiatives and, based on comments from Members, we decided that they were not wise to move forward with because of the impacts they would have on residents.
So through this process we are starting to get the information out, get the message out, this is what the budget means, this is the impact in their communities. At the end of the day, what my message will be to people in the Territories is although we are making difficult choices, we are making them so that we can in fact protect what we have built up in the Northwest Territories over the years. For example, we have invested a lot of money in educating our children in the Northwest Territories, and we invest a lot of money for adult education, and we want those people to benefit from the jobs that are available here in the Northwest Territories. So if we go through this exercise and start to look at cutting so drastically that we undermine all of the work of the years before in trying to build up residents so that they can take those jobs, I think that is one of the things we need to keep in mind.
This whole exercise is not going to be a pleasant one. There will be some times I think we will find a silver lining in the clouds, so to speak, that we get some good things done. We are still spending $1 billion. The budget has grown by just over $20 million from the prior year. So we are continuing to invest in important initiatives. It has not just been a carte blanche, cut exercise. We are trying not to do that. We need to be more systematic, more surgical in what we do. As one of the Members, I think Mr. Allen, talked about a zero-based exercise; well, that may be a tool that we'll need to use to try to find and be more surgical in what we can find for revenues out there and still deliver programs and services for the people. That is why we continue to put our arguments forward to the federal government, is to ensure that we continue to build up the population of the North so that they can better take on the responsibilities they have as parents, as teachers and educators, as health care providers, and that is the message we need to continue to get out. Whatever we can do to help get that message back home to individuals will happen. Thank you.