Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for Churchill for his question. He has been a very fervent advocate for northern residents on this issue. I have certainly appreciated his efforts and I will continue to listen to him and indeed to the residents.
I should, however, like to provide some history on the topic. The current northern resident reduction was implemented in 1991 following the report of a task force that was set up. It concluded that the original community based approach was unfair and unworkable. It proposed that only residents of broad northern intermediate zones receive tax benefits. These zones were defined using objective criteria relating to both environmental factors and community characteristics.
While I appreciate that members of the community may well be disappointed, they were set up on the basis of an objective system which was regarded to be substantially superior to the old system which was much more subjective.