Thank you, Madam Chair. I will start out my general comments and I might have a question or two in here. I'm going to start off with stating the obvious, and that is I'm a new Member, as everybody knows, and I almost feel like I've inherited something that really I haven't had my fingertips on. I haven't had the benefit of going through a full budget cycle, I haven't had the opportunity to go through a business planning cycle, and I must say that I do not agree with the increase to 14 percent on the corporate income tax. I agree with the three of the four presenters at the committee meeting the other day who spoke against this corporate income tax increase from 12 to 14 percent. When Mr. Vaydik was there, he used the word "ridiculous," Madam Chair, and I think along the same lines. I think our fiscal arrangement with Ottawa borders on the insane. I don't understand how we operate as a government under those kinds of circumstances and all these different sorts of formula financing agreements and this tax and that tax, and if we have new tax initiatives they claw back 80 cents on the dollar. I mean it's very, very confusing and it's no way to run a government.
I would encourage the Minister and give him my full support on any new type of fiscal responsibility, legislation that this government wants to enact. Thankfully we got the $50 million one-time money last week to erase the deficit, but I can't for the life of me understand how a government in today's day and age operates in a deficit situation. That just should not be allowed to happen. There should be legislation enacted, hopefully by this government, that does not allow that to happen. It's just not a good way to run a government.
The thing I would support, Madam Chairperson, is maybe something in the middle. As much as I try to wrap my head around this, if we keep the corporate income tax rate at 12 percent we're going to be actually losing money. That makes not a whole heck of a lot of sense to me and anybody out there who's paying attention. But to take it to 14 percent I think is not the right thing to do. I do believe that the cost of doing business in the Northwest Territories, as everyone knows, power rates, utilities of all sorts are very, very expensive. We want to attract business to the Northwest Territories, we want to keep the business we have in the Northwest Territories. We don't want to send a message out there that it's going to cost people even more to do business in the Northwest Territories, and by raising it to 14 percent I think we send that message and we send it very strongly.
What I would agree with, if I have a chance later, would be to come to some sort of compromise on this and maybe look at a rate somewhere between 12 and 13 percent, or 13.5 even. But I really don't think the government has done enough to overturn every rock, to look at its spending habits. Here we are inheriting a budget from the
last government, which by all accounts spent money -- and I believe it was quoted by a few Members of the last government and I believe the Finance Minister -- like drunken sailors. That's exactly what happened, and here we are today trying to pay the bills back and now we're looking at tax initiatives coming out of the pockets of businesses and later on, Madam Chairperson, out of the pockets of residents of the Northwest Territories. We're trying to attract people here, we not trying to discourage people from living here or doing business here. So I can't in any way support this.
I'll turn to the specific revenue options that the Minister brought to us on February 13th and I'll quote from that, "By increasing the rate to two percent, this would ensure the GNWT benefit from tax base increases but would provide NWT corporations with a great incentive to rearrange their affairs to allocate income in other jurisdictions." By the Minister's own staff, they realize that we may lose businesses in the way they allocate their income. To me, it just doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I think if we are going to do this in an effort to at least not lose any more money to Ottawa, we go with somewhere in between; one percent, 1.5 percent. I think that's about all I had for my comments on this. I may be in the chair later, but if I had an opportunity to vote on this, I would vote against it. Thank you.