Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I want to follow up on Mr. Dent's concern regarding the use of special warrants. It has been raised in previous supplementary appropriation about the excessive use, as some of us would say. Going through this bill, out of 64 different activities or transfers or additions going through here, 64 in this bill, 52 of them are for special warrants.
It has been raised before, as Mr. Dent said, about the use of that, the Auditor General's concerns. One thing, as Mr. Lafferty just touched on was that some of the approvals that are so close to actual session coming into play here, I believe the requirement is that if it is 15 days before or after session then the use of special warrants can be deemed to be an inappropriate time to be used.
When it falls just 17 or 18 days and receiving a special warrant, knowing there has been a concern raised before by this Assembly, you would think that maybe one could hold off and come through the normal process of a supplementary appropriation, not previously authorized.
It almost seems like there is a fear that we are going to say no to something. Give us an opportunity to view the information that is given to us so we can either help the government or maybe help the residents of the Northwest Territories in saving some money, that might be a possibility. It is a concern that we see 52 of the different transactions happening here in this bill fall under special warrant. I heard the Minister respond to Mr. Dent about the fact that the departments would run out of funds when it came to payroll and stuff, I believe.
I may have not caught the specific wording, but departments would run out of funds before this came into place. If we go through this and you look at the additional expenses incurred as a result of finalization of the collective agreement, there are a lot of special warrants for $2,000, $6,000, $7,000, $60,000. Are departments that close to running to the edge that they would be running out of funds? Are we in that bad of a state here as the Government of the Northwest Territories? Thank you.