Thank you, Madam Chair. I will speak in favour of the bill. As the committee's report noted, this is the last tax impact bill that this Assembly will deal with on the revenue initiatives in the 2004-05 budget address. It was presented to us very responsibly by the Minister in the budget when we looked at doing a number of things that were required or seemed to make good sense for us. Two things stand out for me in support of this bill, Madam Chair. One is that with our very limited ability to raise or generate a lot of our own revenues through taxes, we can only make very minor amendments in revenues compared to our overall requirements. We are a government that now spends over $1 billion, but we are within fractions of a percent of that overall impact with these tax measures, but we still have to try to make some effort, not only to the people of Canada but also to see where taxes can be fairly distributed. I think that's where this bill for me comes out on the right side. Although certainly there are some in the middle and higher income levels who are going to be losing something in a net way at the end of the year, there are more people who will gain from these tax measures than people who will lose. In that effect, Mr. Chairman, this does help people who don't have a lot of resources to get a little bit ahead of the game. Because of the impact of this, they will be left with a bit more cash in their pocket.

The other thing that causes me to want to support this is a bit on the optimistic side, but it is that continuing large-scale development will mean large numbers of non-resident workers who will be required here in the NWT. I would sure like to see a lot of them become residents in the NWT, but in reality there will not be a large resident population resulting from continuing diamond development and pipeline development. What the increases in the payroll tax will do potentially is generate many millions of dollars, tens of millions of dollars in potential revenue from the very large workforces that we anticipate coming up here.

So those essentially were my remarks, Mr. Chairman, in support of this. I have said in this assembly before and I will say it again today and I will say it again in the future that anything that is considered by this assembly that increases the cost of living or the cost of doing business has to be considered very, very carefully. I think in this case, we have done so and this bill has my support. Thank you.