Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I raise and move the motion basically because I know there was some indication given in the House earlier in the week, from the Minister, that there are alternatives and options being looked into as we speak, hopefully, to how we can address the remote communities that are going to be feeling the brunt of this Beverage Container Program.
I think the motion is not to say that the recovery program is not a good thing. I fully support the program itself, but I just don't see the fairness in the program to the more remote communities in the NWT that are without licensed depots.
Basically, it is unfair, Mr. Speaker, from my point of view, because the approximately 14 communities that are going to be paying this extra beverage container cost are communities that already have higher costs for goods and services overall. They basically have a lot of lower income families and have high unemployment rates with respect to a lot of the regional centres in the NWT. So I feel this motion represents our intention to make this government a little more responsive to a lot of these obstacles that the small communities are faced with, one being just the ability to survive, Mr. Speaker. A lot of these communities struggle just making sure that there is enough food on the table, just enough fuel in the tank to keep the furnace going, making sure that they have enough money to pay the power bills. These are just some of the basic essentials that residents in these communities are faced with every day.
Now we want them to pay more for other things, like orange juice and apple juice, to which they already pay more anyway, and now we want to add an extra 10 or 15 cents to the cost, for which a lot of the residents are never going to receive a refund, or are not going to receive a refund in any specific amount of time. It might be months before they can get to a regional depot. It might be a year. A lot of them won't even see a refund, Mr. Speaker.
I am just raising this motion basically because of the issue of fairness. If we are going to be fair, we cannot treat only
76 percent of our population fairly, Mr. Speaker. We have to treat 100 percent of our population fairly. I just think that the beverage container program, right now, without any options or alternatives to these remote centres, is not displaying any intent for fairness on our behalf. I think that if this government comes up with some alternative solutions within the next few days, or the next couple of weeks for retailers, I know there are a lot of options out there that we discussed in AOC, also, that we presented to the Minister. Hopefully, he will take up a lot of those good ideas and put them into a motion before this program rolls out.
With that, Mr. Speaker, just in summary, I just think that, if we are talking about fairness and equitability, let's be fair to the smallest centres in the NWT which are going to bear the bigger brunt of this program. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.