Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to rise today. This is my 13th budget, going back to the last century. This is truly a budget “first.” This is the first time there’s been debate on second reading and a move to potentially vote down a budget before it even hit the floor of the House. This is, if we check Hansard, the most amended budget, I believe, in the history of the Government of the Northwest Territories in terms of the amount of give-and-take, money in and out, accommodations that were made. This is definitely the first time I can recollect, maybe with one minor exception, where there’s been discussion and this kind of debate on third reading of a bill, any bill, let alone the budget bill. This has been a very interesting process.

Budgets, clearly, are not an event; they’re a process. I want to thank everybody who kept faith with consensus government. We got the bill onto the floor, and then we had the process. It is a process of negotiation, consensus, give-and-take, all the work that went on up and down the halls to get to where we are today.

I’d ask everybody who plans to come back here, all of us when we walk through the door of the 17th Assembly, to keep this time in mind. This is my fourth time. There are four of us who have been through this process four times. Every time we’ve been through the process, we’ve always said, “My God, we’ve got to do it better next time.” After our fourth try we have still to hit success. The 17th Assembly will make their effort at it. Clearly, we’ve embarked on a process that is unique and hasn’t been tried in any of the Assemblies I’ve been in.

In case there is any doubt, I’m going to be voting in support of the budget. I have the same message from my constituents which I’m sure we all have. They want us now to pass the budget and get to work. We have just a shade under 1,200 days left to get a lot of things done. I want to just recognize that the Finance Minister is probably one of the longest serving in the country at this point — it’s usually a profession that has a very high mortality rate — and just acknowledge that this is an important budget. It’s his fifth one. Not many Finance Ministers get to make that claim.

I’d like to thank all the Members of this House. I do believe, as I said to my colleague Mr. Bromley, that when we look back at the end of the 16th Assembly,

I’m convinced we’ll have enough of the pieces in place — that we’re far enough along in our relationships with each other and that we have enough of a plan — that we’re going to be able to look back at a whole host of areas and say that we’ve done a lot of good work for the people of the Northwest Territories. This budget process was the first major hurdle for us to get over.