Evidence of meeting #113 for Finance in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was communities.
11:50 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Wayne Easter
Yes, because if you tie in Mr. Erasmus's point earlier, the potential for a labour force is pretty strong too, with the aboriginal community and others.
Okay, I know everybody has lots more questions, including myself, but we are in a time constraint, so I will thank all the witnesses for their presentations and the submissions they sent in earlier.
With that, we'll go to the open-mike presentation. It's a one-minute statement from the floor.
Mr. Connelly, the floor is yours.
11:50 a.m.
David Connelly As an Individual
I'm a northern business person and I work on a number of not-for-profit boards as well.
I want to stress a couple of things.
Diversification is going to be very important for us. Most diversification that's possible in the north will be very small businesses, in typically indigenous and non-indigenous families, like fur hunting, fishing, arts, crafts, and so on. We need to be careful that we don't disincentivize those people with the proposed new tax laws.
Almost all of our heating and transportation is carbon-based, as is much of our electricity. Putting a carbon tax on this is going to disincentivize employees, as well as residents, and make it more difficult to attract employees. It will certainly be a much greater hurdle to start and maintain our businesses because of the cost of the carbon tax.
Finally, as members of Parliament for our great country, there's a nation-building opportunity that all of you have with respect to roads and electrification from the south of the Northwest Territories, where you are now, up to the middle of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut, which is on the Arctic coast. It would make us competitive with reasonably green, sustainable, reliable energy from the national grid. Also, we need a road, so that we're not putting ice roads in every year and having a cost of two and a half times for mining and sometimes six times for exploration, which is a great disincentive to try and develop our economy. In the nation-building sense, there would be royalties and taxes, and job creation, and road tolls...and obviously pay for the power. It would allow us to stand on our own feet.
No one mining company can do this, but five mining companies over decades building a nation, as has been pointed out, can very much create the infrastructure, jobs, taxation, and royalties. It would then allow us to build the social roads and programs, and address the huge social deficit, which we need to do as well.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, chiefs, members, and other presenters. Thank you very much for the opportunity.
11:55 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Wayne Easter
Thanks very much, David.
With that, we will adjourn and move on to the next stop.
Thank you all.
The meeting is adjourned.