Thank you, Mr. Chair. And that is the $2 billion question. We don't necessarily in the Northwest Territories have -- or the GNWT have a revenue problem. We have an expenditure problem. We do have a pretty healthy revenue. More money would always be better. But I think that if we focus our efforts on the areas where we want to see impacts, then we can make impacts in those areas. As I've said before, we're stretched too thin in certain areas. And I've seen it as a Minister, where you want to accomplish something, but you have positions that aren't filled, things take a long time, and we don't quite get where we want to go. If we had more resources on those specific areas, and those are going to be the priorities that this Assembly sets, then we can do more with what we have. We also need to look at when we develop legislation and policies at how we can provide more services within our current resources and whether it is giving certain professions or occupations the ability to provide more services. You know, a common one that you hear about is pharmacists giving flu shots. We need to look at all of those types of things so that we are making sure we are leaving no stone unturned when it comes to cost savings and effective deliverance of services. We also need to get our infrastructure costs under control. There's no need -- there's no reason for architectural drawings for every new outhouse we build. We can have one set of drawings, and we can build that outhouse all across the territory. The same goes for things like housing. All types of infrastructure. We can look at standardization. And that's been done in other places, and it's proven effective. We need to look at the number of positions we have on the books in the GNWT. A lot of those positions are vacant. What is that money being used for. So there's a number of housekeeping things that we can do as a government to ensure that we are getting more bang for our buck. Thank you.
R.J. Simpson on Questions by Members
On December 7th, 2023. See this statement in context.
See context to find out what was said next.