Thanks to the Minister. Yes, we’re a banker for lots of organizations and that’s what gets us into trouble. However, I want to just comment as
well. This large expense and along with the others that are being asked for in this supplementary appropriation are putting a fairly big strain, I believe, on our reserve fund, our supplementary reserve, which is about $10 million. If this appropriation goes through, it’s $5.2 million and it will reduce our reserve fund to slightly less than $4.8 million. We’re only two months into this fiscal year. We have 10 months of a fiscal year to go with a contingency of about $4.8 million, which I fear is going to be really problematic.
There is any number of events which could occur. We have a fire season approaching which could be quite catastrophic. Things are very dry. We really don’t know what’s coming up there. Traditionally we do not budget for our fire season for the costs that we actually incur. So we know pretty well there is going to be a supplementary appropriation coming up at some point in time after the fire season for us to pay for the cost of the fire season because it’s not in the budget. We know that’s coming.
We know that Norman Wells has a problem with their conversion, the loss of their gas, and they are probably going to need help with their conversion to some other source of fuel or source of heat. There’s that. We have a bridge which may or may not be costing us more money. That’s still uncertain. There are Members who will say that it’s going to cost us an extra $30 million or $40 million. I’m not one of them, but it is yet to be determined whether or not the bridge is going to cost us more money. Even with just those three items, we have a really small contingency to deal with and I am quite concerned that this early in the fiscal year we have such a small contingency.
I guess I’d like to ask the Minister, if push comes to shove and we end up with three or four different calls for funds that put us over our reserve and it’s $4.8 million and we need $10 million, what happens at that point?