Thank you, Mr. Speaker. You know I'm dead set against Bill 60. Cost of living in my riding. The heating fuel and gas over the last year, diesel and gasoline have gone up in Nunakput. Our heating fuel has gone up 25 percent. Our automotive diesel, 24 percent. Gasoline an average 12 percent. Food prices. The price of food going up, we can't afford to buy food in my riding with the monies that we get from getting help. Nunakput communities are the highest food price index in the Northwest Territories. Over 50 percent of families in Nunakput are worried about having enough money for food. Almost half of the residents in Nunakput are worried about they don't have enough money for food all the time or often. We have to hunt; hunt to eat. 67 percent of households in Nunakput eat country food. Half -- half of them -- or half the time all families eat straight country food. The price of power continues to go up in the NWT. The cost of power in my riding, amongst the highest rates. For example, again, Sachs Harbour $2.02 a kilowatt. Housing, the insufficient housing. They're old. They're 40-year-old Webber units. Residents have to pay the price for poorly built housing units. Housing NWT are doing renovations only in 2023-2024, only approximately eight percent of the houses in my region. Housing NWT renovate units not fast enough to keep up with the housing problems. 30 percent of Nunakput homes are overcrowded. Inflation across Canada is at an all-time high. In the NWT inflation is higher than Canada's seven percent. Household income. Nunakput has the highest living costs in the difference in the NWT. 18 percent people in Nunakput considered to have low incomes. Nunakput is over $50,000 below average. Families have in the NWT prices on all goods and services in our region is the highest. Over 10 percent of the families in my riding live on less than $30,000 a year. 344 people in Nunakput live on income assistance. That's 17 percent.

You know, Mr. Speaker, our employment, we have no employment opportunities in my riding. You know, the offshore moratorium is still a go. Everything's on hold. In the outlying communities, there's only so many jobs that go around. And people are -- those jobs are taken until retirement.

Impact on Nunakput communities on Bill 60. An estimated total household carbon tax burden for Nunakput averages $899 for 2023-2024. People in Nunakput can barely live, put food on the table, find employment and earn income to pay for the heat, the power, and the housing. How can we tax people who have nothing to give, Mr. Speaker? Small communities can't afford the carbon tax. Residents should be penalized for where we live? It's not providing -- the GNWT is not putting enough offsets into this carbon tax. The cost of living offset in -- is a step in the right direction. Some small -- some people in the small communities struggle. Our elders, single parents, our widows, our low-income residents all struggle. Ottawa and the GNWT is out for the Beaufort Delta isn't working -- isn't looking out for the Beaufort Delta. Ottawa is squeezing us financially with this tax while it imposes a moratorium on our resource development but doesn't return nothing back for that.

Mr. Speaker, the GNWT, let's not do their dirty work. We're doing their government's dirty work here. I don't want to be painted with that brush when this carbon -- if it goes through. We should be speaking up in all -- all of our Members should be standing together and standing up against Ottawa. Let's take that federal backstop. Let them deal with it. It's really concerning to me, Mr. Speaker, that, you know, this side of the House we've been hearing last six weeks of how we're all struggling across the North with COVID and everything that's been going on and the impacts that it's been having socially, mentally, on our youth, the suicides, all that stuff that we deal with, and yet we're going to stand here and tax our own again? It's not -- it's not a bad thing to let Ottawa take this carbon tax, Mr. Speaker. It's not bad. I know my Minister. I trust her too. She's good at what she does. But at the end of the day, let's not take that -- the burden on us because that's what we're doing. We're lightening the load for Ottawa. We have to stand up for each other as 11 Regular Members, as this side of the House, I wish when the vote comes we all stand up together, be united, and that's going to show the Liberal government in Ottawa that we stand together and united to work for the betterment of the people and not take this tax on.

If Ottawa insists on this tax, Mr. Speaker, it should impose a tax throughout the backstop. The GNWT isn't taking a meaningful control. If anything, the North should be paid for cleaning southern air. Our carbon emission across our territory is 0.05 percent, Mr. Speaker. They should be giving us more.

Mr. Speaker, in conclusion, this bill will impact all residents of the Northwest Territories, especially those in small communities, in the High Arctic, who already face the highest cost of living.

Mr. Speaker, I oppose this bill. I encourage anyone who is concerned about this bill and these Members have been hearing about it all day today to stand up and be counted and stand up for the small communities in the Northwest Territories and let's work together to let Ottawa -- let them do their dirty work and then we could -- we could start off on the right foot tomorrow morning.

Mr. Speaker, this is so near and dear to my heart. You know it as well as I do, people are going without. Again, our elders I worry about, our widows, our single parents. Everybody's struggling across the North but yet this government's going to take, impose this tax, impose it on the people that we're here to stand up for them. Stand up for them and be counted.

I want to thank all the Members in this House in regards who's going to stand up with me in regard to opposing this bill. And I wish my colleagues across the floor, I wish that was a free vote. I wish it was a free vote so that they could be able to stand up for their people who put us here. Not our deputy ministers, not our Premier, not anybody in the back and your employees, the people who voted you in put you here to represent them. Representing them? This is not representing them. We're doing Ottawa's dirty work. We have to stop it. We got to kill Bill 60. I urge my Premier and her Cabinet to stand up with us and send a message to Ottawa, and we'll work together, and we'll take the brunt of it from Ottawa. And I'll be standing right behind her. But, Mr. Speaker, I oppose Bill 60.

I thank all my -- all the Members here that we've been -- it's been a long six weeks, and it's been a long, few days. We've been working long days. And, you know, we get emotional about what's happening. There's a lot going on in our home communities. Just think about it. Somebody's hungry tonight, cut off income support, can't get nothing, when we could do so much. They have the authority to do so much but they choose not to. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.