Thank you, Mr. Chair. The purpose of this motion is twofold: one is to immediately provide up to nearly four months of tax relief to NWT taxpayers, because that would be the time between the passage of the act pass and to be implemented January 1^st, especially during the cold winter months. I believe the savings are in the public's interest.

The second is a more fundamental question which is, who should decide on such a fundamental change as adding a significant tax to a jurisdiction whose number one public issue is the cost of living. Members have spoken at length about how dissatisfied they have been in the approach this government has taken; not universally, but certainly, even the sponsor of this bill has criticized the fact that it is a tax. This motion allows, fundamentally, the people to decide by putting it off until January 1^st and allowing a general election to take place in between that time. This is consistent with where the Alberta federal backstop is going to be implemented also on January 1^st.

I will point out that that is a hostile government to the federal government in terms of this public policy direction, and they scrapped their carbon pricing plan. Even in that circumstance, the federal government allowed them January 1^st. I think in our case, where we have a plan that is compliant that meets deadlines, the federal government will be sympathetic to that concern that, in our system of government, there can be no guarantees over legislation, that they need to go through each legislative step, and the outcome is largely unknown until they are finally passed. This would be a change to do exactly that.

Mr. Chair, until 1:01 p.m. today there was no firm deadline for implementation that had been issued by the federal government. It was not until the sponsor of the bill, the honourable Minister of Finance, directed his staff to request that a deadline be imposed on the Northwest Territories that a deadline was clearly communicated to the House. We asked during our previous review of that for a clear deadline for clear confirmation, and it could not be produced.