Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair, and I will be very quick. The easiest thing for this government to do would have been to say, okay, well, we will do nothing. We had a lot of people working on this, trying to mitigate some of the impact, but the easiest thing to do would have been to just sit back, do nothing, and let the federal government put their backstop in. Then this government would have been accused of not doing anything and letting the federal government just come in and impose their backstop on us without trying to work for the people of the Northwest Territories and help mitigate some of those impacts. I believe that is what we did. Again, as I said before, Mr. Chair, is it perfect? It could use some work. I think the Member from Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh was asking before about the election, and, you know, if a new federal government came in and decided that they were going to repeal the carbon tax, well, it's not a tax that we wanted, and we would make amendments to our -- I would assume that the future government would make an amendment to their legislation so quickly it would probably be one of the fastest pieces of legislation ever to go through this Assembly, and rightfully so, and rightfully so. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. It looks like we are entering the second round of comments, and I am going to allow it because somehow the Minister was not at his witness table for the first round, so I guess that is just the way it is. Mr. O'Reilly.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I will trying to keep this short. I agree no one likes to pay taxes, but sometimes taxes are the price of civilization. However, I think what people want to know is that there has been careful consideration of options. Unfortunately, standing committee did not have options to look at. In the plain-language summary of the bill, the federal backstop information that is presented here is based on rural communities in New Brunswick. Can I have some explanation as to why the federal backstop presented in this paper is about rural New Brunswick? Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. Mr. Stewart.

Thank you. Mr. O'Reilly.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. So, yes, we have got a comparison now between GNWT's approach and what's being done in New Brunswick, so I don't think it's really fair to say that this is what the federal backstop would look like for the Northwest Territories. I just want to make that very clear. The debate, some of the debate, is around that this would cost us less or that the rebates would be larger under the GNWT approach than the federal backstop. This is a federal backstop for New Brunswick. It has nothing to do with us.

The federal backstop that has been negotiated though in the Yukon, this is what it consists of: Yukon individuals; businesses; First Nations governments; municipal governments; and quartz mining operations would get rebates. Yukon First Nation governments are expected to pay about .5 percent of the total tax, but will receive 1 percent of the revenues. Municipal governments will pay 2.5 percent of the total tax, and will receive 3 percent of the revenues. The rebates to individuals are also adjusted so that rebates to individuals living in remote areas of the Yukon will receive a supplement of 10 percent. That's what the federal backstop looks like in the Yukon. The federal government collects the money. It is given to the Yukon government, and they do the rebates through a legislated rebate program. Their rebates are set in legislation.

I just would like to know why our approach couldn't look a little bit more like this with rebates to Indigenous governments to municipal governments, a sliding scale of some sort for people, rebates for individuals who live in remote areas? Why couldn't we have designed a system like this? Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We don't know what the federal backstop would look like for the Northwest Territories. That is a better backstop for the Yukon. Ours may have been different. We don't know that. Realizing that the federal backstop was going to be a little harder for the people of the Northwest Territories to swallow, we wanted to work on an approach that we believe was fairer to the people in the Northwest Territories. I will go to Mr. Stewart to reply to some of the Member's concerns with the numbers. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. Mr. Stewart.

Thank you. Mr. O'Reilly.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I agree with most of what our witness has said, but the federal government has also agreed that they will return revenues that are collected through the federal backstop to the jurisdiction where they are collected, so there is already a commitment to do that. In fact, that is exactly what the Yukon negotiated.

My point in raising these questions, Mr. Chair, is that we had an opportunity to design a different system. Committee asked to try to work with the department, with the Minister, to come up with options for what our system could look like in terms of making sure that people in rural, remote communities would receive greater consideration, ways of revenue sharing. All of those sorts of ideas were put on the table, but we got nothing back. As much as the committee tried to get some options discussed and laid out scenarios, it just didn't work. What we've got now is a bill that sets out what the carbon tax is going to be. Everything else is left to the discretion of Cabinet. We could have had a system like the Yukon, but we don't. We could have had revenue sharing with First Nations, Indigenous governments, municipalities. We could have had some consideration of rebates that would provide more for people in rural and remote communities. We don't have that. We could have negotiated a system like they have in the Yukon. That's why my position is not to accept the plan that Cabinet has developed, but leave it to the 19^th Assembly, redesign this for our own needs, make a truly made-in-the-North approach. Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. Anything from the Minister?

Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair. We designed a program that would mitigate the impact to the people of the Northwest Territories, the cost of doing business in the Northwest Territories. Like I said before, the easiest thing we could have done is nothing and let the government decide what's good for us, like they have been doing for a long time. Those days are over. I've said before, to delay this to the 19^th, we need to come up with a decision. Do we just stop what we do and say, well, federal government, you take over because nobody wants a carbon made-in-the-North approach to carbon tax, and mitigate the impact of carbon pricing to the people of the Northwest Territories? We like your approach better even though it is going to cost our residents more money, and we can put that in our campaign brochure. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you. Anything further? Seeing nothing further, can we agree that we move to the clause-by-clause consideration?

Thank you, Committee. Mr. Testart.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just have a few other questions for the Minister. During this process and in previous communications the government has put out, there has been a claim that the federal government will control how carbon tax revenues are spent, or as the Minister said in his opening comments, "spend the carbon tax revenue as they see fit." Yet the federal government has a stated policy that every dollar raised from a province or territory will return back to the jurisdiction. Can the Minister or his witnesses provide me with a federal policy that contradicts the stated policy that all dollars raised from that federal carbon tax would be returned to the jurisdiction? Thank you.

Mr. Stewart.

Thank you, Mr. Testart.

Thank you. I think that's a much more balanced assessment than what the public has been told with most of the advertising and materials that have been put out there, so I appreciate that clarification.

My second question is: we've heard a lot about how the federal backstop is much worse for the North. Can the Minister produce a costed federal carbon tax plan for the NWT that is specific to the NWT, informed by data drawn for the NWT, and has been previously shared with the department so that they are able to do their own assessment of their plan versus the federal backstop plan? Can the Minister produce that? Thank you.

Thank you. Mr. Stewart.