Thank you, Mr. Chair. I note the amount under this particular item is $4.2 million and it is intended for a line of credit for the Taltson Hydro Expansion Project. In total, this supplementary appropriation request is some $11 million and this is a very significant portion of that total amount of money. I am concerned with what we’re being asked to approve here in total.
Yesterday the Minister advised me that we have a cap of 3 percent increase on our operations expenditures in any one year, but the total amount of $11 million affects a 0.8 percent increase to our operations expenditures for this year of 2011-12, which is what we’re discussing here. So if we have a rate of 2.8 percent, which is what was in his statement yesterday, and we add another 0.8, I think it puts us over 3 percent. So I have difficulty with the answer I got yesterday, that we’re managing to stay under our 3 percent increase to our operations expenditures.
The other significant amount of money is the one that we just discussed related to devolution and resource revenue sharing. The other expenses are some in, some out. Overall, by the time we consider lapses in funding from the last fiscal year and some reduction in funding in various areas, we’re advised that it’s only about $5 million that we are actually being asked to approve here, in new funding anyway. But I again have a problem with the $4.2 million in that we’re being asked to approve it as an expenditure here, but then we’re advised, well, it’s already in our fiscal framework so we can credit it back. So it’s kind of not really an expense and I have great difficulty with that.
My question to the Minister is: why we are paying down this line of credit to the Hydro Corporation? Is it an expense? I guess I understand the principle of paying down the line of credit. It’s costing us thousands of dollars, I gather, in interest payments and I’m quite happy to not pay interest to somebody else. So I’d like to know not so much why we’re paying down the line of credit but why is it an expense here and then credited back. So, really, it doesn’t affect the bottom line. I’m having great difficulty with that.