Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the philosophy of the 15th Assembly is different from previous assemblies, and that's something I think we need to recognize. As a new government we sat down as new Members, some returning, some more experienced, some with new ideas, and decided that we would set a fiscal course early on. Now we've taken that direction, myself as Finance Minister and my Cabinet colleagues, and looked at the alternatives we have before us in trying to meet that target. It's not an easy process. We know that taxes are something that is not an option that's looked upon lightly. In fact we're going to have to ensure that as we go forward that we're spending the money wisely, the money that the taxpayers of the Northwest Territories pay as well as the rest of the Canadian citizens as they play a big part, as over 70 percent of our revenue comes from Canada. So we're going to have to ensure we're doing the best we can.
Early in the life of this Assembly our Cabinet has committed to ensuring we're going to begin to look at that and how we spend money as a government. Look internally, see how we're delivering programs to those in small communities as well as those in the large communities. That balance is going to be a tough balance to come across.
I respect Members who, on principle, do not support the tax initiative. As Ms. Lee mentioned, on principle it's her right to speak and I respect that. We all have that opportunity here, and I've done that on many occasions in the past myself. But one of the things we have to remember is we ended up in a situation, for a number of reasons, that we were now looking at a potential deficit of $46 million for 2004-05. Now myself as a homeowner, if somebody came to me and using the scenario that was used by the Member, if somebody came to me and paid off my mortgage, I wouldn't be tempted to get myself back into a huge debt. I would be very thankful that somebody paid my mortgage, but then I would use my resources to ensure that I didn't end up in a position like that again unless I knew I could pay my own way out of it.
So there are difficult choices that we'll have to make going forward from here. I think again with the options before us, the timeline that we have, we can't afford to put off initiatives and see what the future may hold. By doing that, we only create a bigger hole and deeper hole to try to dig ourselves out of. So we're being proactive here in trying to come up with the approach that we agreed to as new Members of the 15th Assembly. We've taken the initiative, we've gone forward, we are looking long term down the road in trying to secure a stable fiscal environment for the 15th Assembly, but, more importantly, beyond. I think we have to take the actions today to ensure that our children aren't paying for equipment and infrastructure that we make use of today and that they'll run out of in the future. But I agree; we're going to have to look internally and look at how we're spending those dollars and ensure that we're doing the best job for the residents. Thank you.