Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I think the purpose of the bill and the consultations with the government and Standing Committee on Finance was not to allow deficits to keep climbing and climbing and climbing. I think what we're looking at right now: if there is an accumulated deficit, a debt at the time of division, then that debt would be divided up along with the assets of the Northwest Territories. That's the way that would be dealt with. But the purpose was not to allow that to grow any larger than it is at the present time, Mr. Chairman.
With regard to accountability, I think the government does recognize that we are accountable to this Legislative Assembly, but at the same time we also recognize that we're a minority government.
I think Members have to realize that each time we have tried to cut and we have tried to do something serious about reducing certain areas of the budget, the first thing we know, people are on their feet saying, no, you can't do that; we don't want that to happen. So it makes it very difficult for us to make those tough decisions simply because, as I've been told many times and understand, 15 out-vote eight just about every time.
So I think there was an honest effort by the government and the Standing Committee on Finance to start to recognize that we're in this thing together and to draw our attention to this issue by saying there is a law on the books that says that we can't do this. It would work equally well for Ministers as well as Members, and there would at least be some document that you can point to and say, we're not allowed to do that; we should be acting responsibly and we shouldn't be getting ourselves into these situations.
As far as Members of the House being accountable as well, I think their accountability will be on the day they pass the budget. In other words, presumably they would not pass a budget that was outside the parameters of this particular bill, and of course, Ministers then would be accountable between sessions or between budget sessions simply because they would know that they could not go outside the parameters of this bill. They would be accountable to the Legislative Assembly at the earliest opportunity after the Speaker had received the year-end accounts.
Again, Mr. Speaker, with regard to accountability, I think the bill is fair. It recognizes that if there was a serious epidemic and the government had to spend millions of dollars on a particular issue...Let's say the city of Yellowknife was threatened by fire and we had to spend millions of dollars protecting Yellowknife, that would be seen to be something out of the norm and the Legislative Assembly would be able to recognize that and say that's an abnormal occurrence and there's not a question of confidence in the government.
So I think it's as close as we can get, although Mr. Koe is correct. It does not recognize the accumulated debt, and as I said before, I think the feeling there is if it's as small as it is right now, it would be divided up by some method at the time of division. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.