Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I rise in opposition to this bill, I will be voting against it.

Mr. Speaker, it is not too often that I oppose this kind of legislation. Mr. Speaker, this is brought before us, in fact on the recommendation of the Commissioner, and it is a serious piece of legislation for this committee, for this Legislature. But there are elements of this bill that I believe must be challenged. As I have done during debate in Committee of the Whole of this spending appropriation act, I want to take this final opportunity to air my objections.

Mr. Speaker, this is a bill for approximately $16 million in spending. Let's be clear; $11 million of this has already been committed under the authority that Cabinet has under the special warrant category. So really the decision before this Assembly in third reading is that we are being asked for permission on only about $5 million worth of miscellaneous projects. Two-thirds of this bill, the $11 million before us, are only as information items, things that have already been committed to and are outside this Assembly's influence. The balance of these items, the $5 million that is technically called "not previously authorized" are not trivial projects, Mr. Speaker, don't let me give you that impression. Rather, they do cover a number of things that will have some influence and some impact especially in the smaller communities. They range from everything from assistance to the community of Fort Smith to assist with problems that it encountered because of a land slide this summer, to buying employees houses. There is quite a range of things in there, and again I don't want to trivialize them. But I think that there are aspects of this bill that deserve to be challenged and I hope that I will be able to make myself clear over the next few minutes, Mr. Speaker.

I should explain, for people who are watching, for a special warrant there is generally a provision there that allows the Cabinet under emergency and unanticipated expenses to create allocations and provide for the normal course of business. I think they are a necessary part of the authority that Cabinet should have. But in this bill the government is taking steps that while they may be legal, are not acceptable and are not responsible given our tight financial situation, Mr. Speaker, and I believe that they also violate the overall spirit of consensus in this Assembly.

Mr. Speaker, we have a bill that authorizes $16 million in spending and leaves us with only $1 million in our supplementary reserve. We still have five months left to go in this government. The reserve is there for emergencies, things that are truly unanticipated. So if we have another crises in the Northwest Territories, say an outbreak of a disease such as we had earlier this year and we needed extra money to go in and spend for it -- I think it was a meningitis outbreak -- if we have another school collapse or something where we need to go in and make some emergency repairs, if there is an environmental disaster of some kind, we will have $1 million left to do something with and then we are going to have to go into debt. Just debt.

I don't think that is a responsible way for us to have managed this supplementary reserve fund this year, especially in the face of the things that we are told were allocated.

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You know, Mr. Speaker, in the face of all this spending we have a $20 million cutback that we're struggling to implement and it's going to be coming off programs such as health, education and justice and other pressing needs. So on one hand we have a Cabinet that's ready to put our entire supplementary reserve on the line, and yet we're instructed to withdraw $20 million from current budgets. This is something that has been well advertised and well promoted about our fiscal situation, Mr. Speaker. This is not responsible spending and I oppose it.

Further, Mr. Speaker, is a particular issue of the $6.6 million black hole that this government presented us with for the security upgrade at the Yellowknife Airport. The government has given in to the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority's order to upgrade our airport, but has left this economy with a $6.6 million question mark as to how to pay for it. We've been told by CATSA that even a superficial review of the comparative costs that other airports have to absorb is secret. Why can't our Assembly at least have some say and some information about this expenditure?

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The Department of Transportation in particular, Mr. Speaker, has let us down. Obviously it had many months, I think about 10 months -- at least according to the information that was provided in committee the other day, -- to plan the renovations, do the drawings, call tenders, but it didn't have time, obviously, to plan the cost factor; the consequences of taking $6.6 million out of the travelling public's pocket. That is not responsible and it's not acceptable and it's one of the reasons I'm voting against this.