Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have a number of comments and they are general. I am generally pleased with the budget as it has been presented.

I think, as I stated earlier in my Member’s statement today, I approve of the fiscal strategy that we’re following. I think that we did need to maintain our spending in the fiscal year that we’re currently in and I think that we need to maintain that spending over the next fiscal year to try and counteract the effects of the downturn in our economy nationally. I believe that we need to maintain the spending levels over this next fiscal year in order to do that.

This budget does project a certain amount of debt. It is not something which I would agree to as a general way to go. I acknowledge, again, because of the current downturn in the economy that we are encountering, that debt is something which is necessary. My only concern, and I think the Finance Minister has already said that he has stated and I agree with him, that debt should not become the norm. I think he has acknowledged in the budget of 2011-12 that we need to not incur any further debt and start working to reduce the debt that we do have.

I am somewhat concerned with the year-over-year increase in expenditures in this budget. I acknowledge that a lot of the increase is due to negotiated contracts with our employees and that has created an increase in our expenditures, but we have gone to approximately 7.5 percent increase in our total expenditures in this budget. I don’t think it is acceptable. I think we ought to be aiming for a lot

less than that. My understanding was that, in May of 2009, we had a discussion. At that time, I thought we had agreed to keep our expenditures down around 4 or 5 percent. It does concern me that we are constantly going up in terms of expenditures. I know that we are getting revenue in terms of our grant. We are getting revenue in terms of our taxes and some increases in our taxes and fees, but from what I understand of the numbers in the budget, the extra revenue we are getting in this budget year of 2010-11 is less than what our expenditures are. We cannot continue to do that.

I am extremely pleased to hear that we are going to work to establish a heritage fund. I believe the Minister said that will happen before the end of the 16th Assembly. I would love to see it happen before

the end of this next fiscal year. I encourage the Minister to get it established as soon as possible.

I am also extremely supportive to the change to the Public Housing Rental Subsidy Program. I stated earlier that it is long overdue and it was a necessary change. I think that it will be a program change which is only going to benefit our constituents. As long as we examine the policies surrounding that program and the policies surrounding Education, Culture and Employment’s subsidy programs, as long as we do that when we do this change, then I think it is going to be for the better.

I am somewhat disappointed that the budget doesn’t include any new revenues, although I don’t know if I missed it in our discussions or if it was sprung on us, but I do appreciate that we are having a cost of living increase to our sin taxes and to our fees. I think that we have tied increases on an annual basis to the cost of living increases is a good thing. I do want to say, in terms of revenues, that the Minister has held two roundtables. I think they have been quite valuable. I get the impression that we will see an initiative in terms of revenue in the budget for 2011-12. I would encourage the Minister in very strong terms that that is something we need. We have to start increasing our own-source revenues. We cannot continue to plan on grants from the federal government maintaining the levels that we have now.

One of the things that I am disappointed, a couple of specific things in terms of the budget, is that I don’t believe we have planning money in this budget to refurbish our one and only territorial hospital. It is a very old building and some 20-plus years old. The biggest problem with the building is it is an outdated design and has become very inefficient. It creates difficulties for the staff working and administering that hospital for them to do the job to the best of their ability. They certainly do a good job, but it could be a lot easier if they had a building that was better designed. The refurbishing of that building is something that is extremely

important, in my estimation. The planning dollars for that refurbishment needs to be there.

Maybe it is picky, but I am really concerned that the budget does not consider operation and maintenance costs for new buildings when we put a new building into the capital budget. We don’t automatically then say we have to add these funds to the operations and maintenance budget for the same year. We seem to treat them as an initiative. To me it is hardly an initiative when you have a building that you have to run and the cost to run it, it is not an initiative. It is an operational expense. It is just a matter of how we look at it.

One of the other things that is, again, picky and I have expressed this before in the previous budget but the mains seem to have some items which are identified as other expenses with no explanation for what those “other” are. Just today I have received an explanation of what the “others” are. Unfortunately, to my dismay, I found that there are others under others under others. So we still have a few others which are unexplained, but I will bring more detail to that when we discuss the mains in some detail.

The last sort of detail is that I want to say that in terms of an item in the Education budget which talks about spending some funds on a nutritious food study. In my estimation, it is not necessary. I would far rather see that funding put into a milk subsidy program, a pilot program even, but I don’t think we need to do another study to determine nutritious foods. There are organizations within the Territory that have done that work or that are doing that work. I think that we could quite easily take data that is already there and apply it to get to the end point that this study seems to want to go. Again, in general, I am pleased with this budget. I look forward to discussing some of the details as we go through the various departments over the next couple of weeks. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.