Thank you, Mr. Speaker. On Monday, March 19, I had the opportunity to attend a public meeting in Fort Liard that was being put on by the Departments of Lands, Municipal and Community Affairs, and Finances. The topic was about land and taxes.
I would have to say, overall, it was a good meeting. The staff did a great job of getting the information out to the people who were present. However, it did raise a number of concerns about how land taxes were collected for the Hamlet of Fort Liard.
Unfortunately, a number of individuals were told not to pay their taxes. This has caused a big mess for those people, the band, the hamlet, and the GNWT. I spoke to people who are wishing to pay the taxation bill, but they cannot because of their credit rating. The matter has been turned over to a third-party collections company, who are not very nice and tell the residents that they need to sell their homes to pay off this debt.
A couple of things that surprised me during the meeting:
- The government decided that they would impose an interest rate at 15 per cent for all non-paid taxes. The rationale was to scare people to ensure people would pay their taxes on time. This didn't seem to be working.
- Due to government cuts, the government had to go out to a third party to try and collect the taxes and interest.
After the meeting, I had to discuss with a number of residents about this issue, and I would like to share a couple of their stories with you.
- One person had inherited his father's home but included a $15,000 debt in taxes and, astonishingly, another $55,000 in interest, for a total of $70,000.
- An elder went missing, and the government told the family that they had to wait until he was legally declared dead before they could do anything. The waiting period is 10 years. However, the government still wants the family to pay the taxes. This is crazy.
This issue has been going on for a long time, and we need to come up with a solution to deal with it properly. It isn't going away and we can't remain silent on it any longer. These are the people we were elected to represent, and we need to do a better job. Mr. Speaker, I will have questions for the Minister of Finance later today.