Thank you, Mr. Chair. Oh, look, I have 10 minutes.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I wanted to provide a couple of comments on this supp. In general, I’ve mentioned this before, I am always amazed at the amount of money that Finance comes back for after we pass an initial budget and asks for more money, and the amount of money that is asked for kind of blows me away. In looking at the items that are in this particular supp, there certainly are some which I can agree with. I think the $1.8 million, no, sorry, it’s one point whatever, but the money that’s required for the Mackenzie Valley Highway project description report, that’s $1.2 million, I think. To me, that’s an expense which we could not foresee, and I see that as an understandable supplementary appropriation expense.

Certainly the $15 million for the bridge, that was unforeseen. I provided my comments last week in a statement and I am, unfortunately, not surprised that we are over budget. I do think, though, that we have to approve this amount of money. It’s kind of one of those things where you have to hold your nose and jump in.

There are a couple of transfers of money back and forth between departments and from one year to the next, and I don’t have a problem with those. The funding that’s going to the City of Yellowknife to finish the bypass road; fairly obviously, I support that. It’s not a total cost to this government and it will allow the road to get completed. So I think our cost in that is probably, I think it’s $300,000 or $600,000, so it’s well worth the expense, I think, and that with the city covering the remainder.

The lab information system that the Department of Health and Social Services is looking for, I’m not absolutely sure that this is an expense that couldn’t have waited until the next year. I realize that this is an old system and it needs to be replaced, but it kind of goes to my difficulty with the lack of planning that seems to happen sometimes in terms of budgets in general and, you know, something comes along and it’s... All of a sudden, well, we need the money so let’s ask for a supplementary appropriation and get the money now instead of either planning better, earlier, or waiting and asking for the money when the regular budget comes through.

There is some transfer of money between departments for Tuk Airport. I absolutely support that. Then there are some transfers back and forth for infrastructure, federal infrastructure, stimulus funding money, and I don’t have a problem with those.

So, in general, I can accept most of what’s in here, but I do have problems with particularly the lab info system, which I’m not sure is of an emergent nature. That’s probably the only one that I have a really large problem with. So other than that, Mr. Chair, I have no further comments at this time. Thank you.