Mr. Speaker, yesterday I listened to all my colleagues speak. I was chair of Committee of the Whole; I wasn't able to speak so now I get to speak. I get to say my opinion. I tried to keep my cards close during the time because I wanted to, you know, make sure that debate went on and I'm not -- I'm sitting in the chair. So now it's time for me to actually vote, and I have to say it. But I'm going to give -- I'm not going to really repeat everything everybody says because, you know, with my colleagues on this side of the House, whether they're for it or against it, I agree with you. But, you know, I have to listen to my constituents as Member for Thebacha says. And the only constituents that I heard from are against taxes. And we as a government, we know that we're going to have a tax whether I say yes or no. So at this point, you know, I think my mind -- the way that I look at things is that -- sorry, my notes, my everything has been scattered all over. I've been doing this for, like, bouncing back and forth because, you know, I -- so, you know, with all the things that the Minister has done with us, you know, I applaud that she's been trying hard to make sure that this bill could meet the needs of the North. I even look at what the seniors has brought to it, and I look at our Minister of education and all the things that he's done in income support, and even identifying the area that we need to support our seniors. Home heating subsidy, we've increased. We've done all these things for our seniors to try, you know, and I don't know if that was for Cabinet to try and -- you know, implement this -- to make a little bit more of a cushion. But what I do know is that the things that we asked for in our report, we didn't get. We got the things that we talked about prior to and then knowing that this government didn't even take the recommendations from the 18th Assembly and consider them, or did they? Maybe they did, but they didn't even try to do any of those before putting this bill forward. And I want to give it to my colleague, who is not here who is I'm sure wishing he could vote tonight, that he raised this. He raised this and maybe in his way of his own red alert, he raised this in the fall and, you know, us as Members, we're drinking from a fire hose and, you know, we had a lot of catchup to do after COVID, and I'm sure the Ministers as well. And we had so much legislation and so many things that we were reviewing that trying to prioritize what are we -- what are we reading, where are we at, you know. Why didn't we push harder to have this legislation taken off the table, fixed, and then brought back to us. Now we're in the 11th hour and we don't even have time for new legislation to come through.

You know, I talked to my colleagues about who do I trust? Who do I trust? Do I trust the Government of the Northwest Territories? Do I trust the federal government? Right now, you know, there's so many things that we've asked for and we've not gotten. We've asked for different types of things from these Ministers we haven't got. And so do I go with -- as somebody had told me yesterday, if they say that I still have hope. As a new Member, of course I have hope. I'm here because I have hope that this government will listen to me. But time and time again that hope has been stepped on. So, you know, after everything that I've got to contemplate, I have to stand with majority of my colleagues as you guys do together, and I will not support this bill. Thank you.