Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As this tax bill evolves, I will support it but I think I need to put it on the record, Mr. Chairman, that during the last couple of weeks I was raising a number of educational questions to the Minister of Finance and trying to offer some helpful suggestions and what we should do to try to develop some incentives to work alongside the Cabinet to achieve the solutions to some of the understandable problems he has. I think it's quite right, with the limited amount of information we have to ascertain whether a tax increase would be a net benefit, I think the question is always in the
back of people's minds. I think for the Fast Food Cafe in Inuvik, it doesn't differ from any other restaurant.
Nonetheless, one key comment I would like to enter into the record, whether it's a small increase or a large increase, there's still a concern out there. Again, this is an evaluation done by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, that there may be less spending by the higher income tax bracket people to purchase services and products throughout the Northwest Territories. Just a quick comment to that, I don't know if it's relative to the principle of the bill, but if you go to northern Alberta you see about 150 NWT plates on a given weekend in the larger municipalities shopping throughout the Peace region, Grand Prairie and large municipalities south.
The other one that also concerns ourselves is the fact that if this is not communicated wisely to the employable public, I believe we will have some problem recruiting highly skilled labour into the North. That's what I think we have to be very cautious of. Even the Minister expressed that in one of his presentations to ourselves through his briefings. He stated very clearly that we have to take some precautionary measures, and I agree with him. But from a comment point of view, I just wanted to make the Minister aware that I will support this bill, but I think also we need to inform the public that we are taking some precautionary measures to make sure that it doesn't increase from beyond what he is proposing. With that, Mr. Chairman, thank you.