Thank you, Mr. Chair. This motion is to replace the schedule in Bill 42 to change the date when the carbon tax comes into effect to September 1, 2019, and ensure that the per-unit volumes for natural gas are accurate by changing "litre" to "cubic metre." Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have a motion that Bill 42 be amended by deleting the schedule set out in the appendix to the bill and substituting the schedule attached to the motion.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate the time. The Member makes some comments there and some accusations. We have worked with committee. They were aware of the September 1^st deadline, and I think the fact that we wanted to get it in writing is because committee had asked us to provide it, and we did.

I'm not going to get into that debate. There are a number of debates that we could get into, but the bottom line is the federal government has informed us, and this had been out there for a while, that September 1^st was our deadline. We worked in collaboration with them to go from the original July 1^st deadline to September 1^st, and they agreed.

The Member talks about the Alberta model. They have been paying carbon tax for a while, and then, when a new government came in, they made some changes. There is no comparison. They are a different kettle, and we are not too concerned about how they go about their business. As long as we go about our business in trying to do what is best for the people of the Northwest Territories. One of those things is taking an approach. This is not the carbon tax bill. The federal government has got the federal carbon tax bill. This is our approach to carbon tax. As one Member pointed out before, our approach is superior to the federal government approach.

If I may, Mr. Speaker, I'd like to use a couple of examples. Mr. and Mrs. Hardworking Constituent, paying a mortgage, paying for their own fuel. Under our backstop, if they bought $1,000 a month worth of fuel, they would be charged carbon tax, but it would be rebated at the point of purchase, so it would only cost them $1,000, as it did before. Under the federal system, the federal approach, they will pay tax on that $1,000 worth of fuel; they may get it back at the end of the year; they may not; they will not know until income tax time. The same with businesses; our heating fuel rebate applies to businesses, who would have to pass that extra cost on to someone. Who will they pass it on to? The consumer in the Northwest Territories.

So our approach, I believe, is the better of the two for the people of the Northwest Territories, and it's something that we need to do. I think Members should take all of that into consideration, and the Member said it himself. Nobody likes a tax, including myself, but we have to try to do what we feel. What we were elected to do is to protect the interests and the well-being of the people of the Northwest Territories. Because a lot of us have lived in small communities, we know the challenges that are there, and sometimes I believe some Members are out of touch with the realities of the high cost of living in many parts of the Northwest Territories. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I totally agree with you. Alberta is a different jurisdiction than ours. We have been doing the work on our particular one. To say that, giving the heads-up on the motion, I have been discussing it with committee, and I think that we did ask committee if they would be willing to move the motion to change the implementation date as we went through clause-by-clause. I take issue with the fact the Member keeps saying that these things are being sprung on us in surprise. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The original date of implementation was July 1^st, but because we needed to work on our legislation, we had approached Canada to see if we can delay the implementation. They understand our process, therefore we agreed to it. We had hoped to deal with this during our clause-by-clause so that we wouldn't have the debate on the floor of the House. I will be moving a motion later to change the implementation date from July 1^st to September 1^st. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

September 1^st, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate the time. We started working with committee in June of 2017, and it is misleading to tell the public that the federal approach is superior to ours. The Member failed to mention that our point-of-sale rebate on heating fuel, the rebate at the point of purchase, is an additional $400-something per household in the Northwest Territories. We give bits and pieces of information, but we need to give all of the information, the correct information, and committee has had a lot of that information.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Let's just be very clear on something. I did direct my staff to reach out to Canada and work with them on further clarification at the wish of committee. I have done that.

To the Member's comment about the people of the Northwest Territories not having an opportunity to comment on this, well, first of all, this piece of legislation was given second reading in March and given to committee. They have had six months. They determined that they weren't going to take it on the road, and that would not allow the people of the Northwest Territories to comment on this critical piece of legislation. Through the process that we went through in our public engagement and doing a "what we heard" document, we heard from residents of the Northwest Territories, and I believe that one of the Members quoted from it the other day. Of course, they weren't happy with the proposed tax, but I think that, in most cases, they were more concerned with addressing the cost of living, and I think that we have done that.

It is unfair to blame the department for committee's failure to bring this out on the road. I think that there was a public news release that they had sent out a little while ago, and people have not had the opportunity to tell them exactly how they feel because they didn't give them that. We couldn't. We did our public engagement, but beyond that, it was in the hands of committee. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We worked with Canada; we understood there are processes, and the process we had to go through, we had not been able to deal with this in June, and the July 1^st implementation was the original date, so we worked with Canada and they understood that, after this particular session, we might have been in a position where the September 1^st deadline would apply. I'm not too concerned about -- I'll stop there, Mr. Chair. Thank you.