Thank you, Madam Chair. For the Minister of Finance, I welcome him this afternoon to the proceedings and welcome to your staff, as well. I am going to sound a bit like a broken record again this afternoon, but it's something I feel like I am obligated to say because when you see something happening that you don't think should be happening, you had better say something, and now is my time to say it and I am going to say it again.
The addition of the staff positions in the macroeconomic policy area within the Department of Finance is, in my mind, something that's just been dreamt up to replace the Bureau of Statistics, which happens to no longer be within the Department of Finance's mandate and has switched over to the Department of Executive. I think the macroeconomic policy unit is just to fill that void. I will certainly have a number of questions as we go through detail and I will try to keep these strictly to comments.
It would seem to me that given the economic history of the Northwest Territories with the pipeline from Norman Wells, the boom we had in the Beau-Del in the '80s, the fact that the Northwest Territories produces 14 percent of the world's total production of diamonds, for a government to admit in the year 2006 that it doesn't have a macroeconomic policy, or any type of direction, or nobody was doing this work before, I find that completely unbelievable that the government could admit to something like that, an oversight like that.
Obviously somebody in this government, of the 4600-odd workforce that we have, has been doing work in this area. I mentioned it to the Minister of ITI that was before us today, they have an investment in economic analysis division within his department. If you are looking at something like this, like an economic policy division, to me it just doesn't belong in the Department of Finance. Absolutely not. I think the Department of Finance should concentrate on what it does best and that's the numbers. I don't think it should concentrate on policy, especially economic policy. I think that belongs somewhere else. I don't know how much more I can plainly say that. I think the department has its hands full trying to wrestle with the federal government on trying to get a better arrangement.
The way things have gone here lately -- and I have said this before today and I will say it again today -- it's no way to govern a territory. How we just limp from month to month and year to year on the scenarios that play themselves out here is beyond me. It's so hard to believe that we even manage to exist, given what we are up against. The fact that we need some fiscal surety from Ottawa remains something that's very elusive.
I would like to think that we are close to getting some kind of resolution to this in Ottawa. The Finance Minister was with us at a public meeting earlier today when we talked about the lowering of the corporate tax rate from 14 percent to 11.5 percent. If you start looking at the whole scenario around this, the reason why the Government of the Northwest Territories thought it was forced into making a decision on lowering that tax rate from 14 percent to 12 percent just to appease the federal government, forced into a corner, and now here we are, two years later, lowering it back from 14 percent to 11.5 percent to try to save what tax filers haven't left the Northwest Territories, so if they do file their taxes here we can at least maintain some revenue streams. It's hard for me to believe that we just sit back and let this type of thing happen.
I said it earlier in the public meeting today, we just take it. We're forced to accept that that's the reality that the Northwest Territories is faced with. It doesn't seem to me that we stand up. Somewhere if somebody put me in a corner and made me make a decision where I lost $30 million and that's just the start, $30 million, it could be 60, it could be 80, it could be $100 million that that decision that the Government of the Northwest Territories was forced into two years ago comes back to cripple us for another $100 million. If somebody forces a decision like that on me, I'm going to take them to court. I'm going to challenge them and I'm going to do everything in my power to show somebody, say something that, listen, this isn't our fault, it's your problem, you made us make the decision, you fix it, and I haven't heard our government stand up and say these things to Ottawa. Stop taking advantage of us, give us what we need.
I know the report from AOC says, and I want the Finance Minister to know this, he has my support, 100 percent of my support, stand up, be aggressive, go after these guys and I think they've done us wrong on forcing us on that decision two years ago, and I think the federal government should have to pay us back once we can quantify. We might not ever be able to quantify what it's going to cost us, but we should go back after them for that money. It was no fault of ours, Madam Chair. So, again, I just want to say for the Finance Minister that he be aggressive, go after them and you'll have my full support. I know he's doing his best and it's a tough position to be in, Madam Chair, but I think we have to get tougher and we have to get more aggressive. Thank you.