Mr. Speaker, as a government, we have to be fair to all communities in the NWT, whether it's a little one with 100 people or a community the size of Yellowknife. So we have to look at need. If there is a need for more classroom space in Yellowknife, we have to compare that to the need for more classroom space in the other community we may be considering. Whichever one is the greatest need is the one that will get the highest priority. We don't try to allocate it all by per capita. It's by need in those cases.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Supplementary, Ms. Lee.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I believe I am talking about the importance of the need as well. I understand that we can't be funded totally on the basis of per capita, but what we have to understand is it has to come to a stop where Yellowknife gets the short stick all the time because it appears to have too much. Mr. Speaker, at what point does the government recognize that Yellowknife serves all the Territories and that is has to be funded on a more fair basis. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. The honourable Minister of Finance, Mr. Handley.

Mr. Speaker, we have to try to be fair to all communities in terms of meeting their needs and meeting the needs and the amount we spend per capita are two different things. So I hope that we are being fair to Yellowknife and hope we are being just as fair to Hay River and to Colville Lake and everywhere else in meeting the needs, whether it's for classroom space or any of the other programs we offer. We are trying to be fair to everybody, including Yellowknife. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Final supplementary, Ms. Lee.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I would suggest to the Minister that the problem isn't to do with the fairness or economies of scale, but that we have just allocated too little money for capital. What is the Minister doing to review the portion of the budget that goes into capital investment? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. The honourable Minister of Finance, Mr. Handley.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I am continually struggling with the question of how we meet our capital needs. If we wanted to meet our needs completely and the way we should be, we should probably be spending somewhere between $100 million and $200 million a year on capital. We simply don't have the money to do that right now. As we speak, we have been discussing this and negotiating with Ottawa on our infrastructure needs and doing everything we can to get them to get that message. The Premier is in Ottawa right now dealing with health needs, including capital needs on the health side. So we recognize that the $74 million that we are spending this year, and what we spent in the past, and what we plan on spending in the future is probably not going to meet all of our needs to the extent that we wish they would. So we have to do that. We have to be creative. As I said earlier, we want to look at other ways of doing some major projects with P3, private/public partnerships, other ways of getting big resource companies to help us, so we have to be creative on increasing our capital budget. But to take it out of the operations side, I think would probably not be a wise move right now given the amount of money we have to move to make a difference. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Item 6, oral questions. The honourable Member for Yellowknife South, Mr. Bell.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My question is also for the Minister responsible for the FMBS. I appreciate he has already indicated his willingness to work with Members in looking at the capital allocation process. I don't want to be guilty of piling on, but I think it's important to adequately address some of the current concerns with the program as it now sits. I know Regular Members are having a difficult time, Mr. Speaker, linking the capital allocation process to government's priorities and strategic objectives. We don't know if highways come before parks or if provision of basic health care services comes before building jails. So can the Minister reconcile this for us and explain to us how priorities are linked to the capital allocation process?

Thank you, Mr. Bell. The honourable Minister of Finance, Mr. Handley.

Mr. Speaker, we have been using the five criteria I went through before that are guidelines for us in allocating our capital. So we look at protection of people, protection of assets, of the environment, of our investment, of program needs and try to balance that. So that's the main criteria we use. In addition to that, Mr. Speaker, we often get money from Ottawa, for example, that is targeted to specific programs. We have to use that limitation and often it means we have to match money, taking some from our capital and having to match that money. So it's very difficult to try to balance the amount of money we spent on Highway No. 3 against Aurora College Campus in Inuvik against a water project in Colville Lake. Those are difficult decisions. We have to use the five criteria as well as spending limitations that are placed on us in coming to a final decision. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Supplementary, Mr. Bell.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I think Regular Members appreciate and know that it's very difficult, but the Minister has previously explained that behind closed doors Ministers are expected to do exactly that. We look at this on a government-wide basis. I wonder if the Minister is prepared to share information publicly then about how projects in this year's capital plan were ranked against each other? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Bell. The honourable Minister of Finance, Mr. Handley.

Mr. Speaker, I think as we go through the main estimates of each department, then that should become clear how we arrived at a particular project or against all other ones. I can't rank each project against each other project. It would have to be in a more general sense. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Supplementary, Mr. Bell.

Thank you. Mr. Speaker, as you know in our consensus system we've had a couple of cracks at this current budget, and I can assure the Minister that this hasn't become clear for me, and I am fairly certain it won't in this next couple of weeks. Mr. Speaker, the Minister indicated and acknowledged, and I believe he said, we never arrived and -- I think he's speaking of Cabinet -- at 100 percent consensus on major capital projects. I am curious about that, Mr. Speaker, would he acknowledge then that that really indicates a failing in this process because truly if that's the case, we haven't taken the politics out of the process at all, have we? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Bell. The honourable Minister of Finance, Mr. Handley.

Mr. Speaker, I don't think it's a matter of politics that prevents us from arriving at 100 percent consensus. It's the fact that a Minister has a mandate to deliver education programs, for example, and feels very strongly about the need for both operational and capital money to do that. Another Minister has the responsibility to deliver health programs and feels strongly about that. So we always have to have those debates, and we don't always agree 100 percent on which project should make it into the budget and which ones won't make it into the budget. But it's just simply that we have a lot of conflicting, competing mandates to deliver through our government programs and services. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Final supplementary, Mr. Bell.

Thank you. I agree that Ministers would have conflicting mandates, competing mandates, but the Minister has indicated we have an objective set of criteria that ranks projects in order to deal with that. I think that if the process were more transparent and we could see how the projects had been ranked -- we're told the deputies are doing it anyway -- that that would assure Regular Members. I'd ask the Minister again, if he would share publicly information about how projects in this year's capital plan were ranked. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Bell. The honourable Minister of Finance.