Thank you, Madam Chair. My first question, really, if you don’t mind, Madam Chair, I’ll throw that out for the Minister’s wrap-up comments, but I’ve heard a couple of comments about carry-over and we haven’t actually read anything about carry-over. So if I could get clarification on what the carry-over was last year. I’m just looking at the numbers provided today and I see that our main estimates were $124 million last year, actuals or revised are almost double that: $240 million. I’m wondering if much of that – obviously Housing Corp might have 10 or 15 million dollars in there – but it seems like there would be $100 million in carry-over. So I’m not sure what progress has been made on that. So I’d appreciate some clarification on that.

I recognize the Minister has worked hard here to stick to our fiscal strategy, and it’s a matter of competing priorities, and much discussion and debate and weighing of value and so on. Some of my concern over the infrastructure we will be working on is that it’s not part of the budget here today; it’s being left out to the later supps. I’m thinking of, for example, the Inuvik-Tuk highway and the energy infrastructure initiatives. That’s something we seem to be falling into the habit of and I don’t think it’s a good practice. So I just want to make that point.

Another concern is that we are having a lot of infrastructure deficit concerns. I think it’s peaking or profiling the highest point with the Department of Transportation. I think maybe we’re holding the line a bit generally, but Transportation certainly is going in the wrong direction, and the committee, I know, has tried to profile this with Cabinet and we will continue to try. It seems to be a challenge to penetrate that. The barrier is there for communication.

Persistent long-term needs that still are not in the budget. There are a number of these. Certainly for

me, the Detah road remains absent. Again, I had a constituency meeting the other night and residents are still flabbergasted that there is not a plan in place to complete that project. It’s been done with tail ends of other projects and so on. Not a real respectful approach there. That’s still missing.

Stanton, again, I think we’re still behind on that. We are moving and I think it’s well recognized the needs there, but I believe we have really fallen down on that one. Not just this Assembly. I see a major deficit there.

Certainly educational facilities in Yellowknife, Mildred Hall, Sissons, the need for an Aurora Yellowknife Campus. Of course, outside of Yellowknife, the women’s correctional facility, which has been mentioned. Sort of glaring gaps there that have been known for a considerable amount of time still not being addressed.

I am happy to see the energy efficiency upgrades that are being proposed and enabled by the Capital Asset Retrofit Fund. I think that will continue to build and is proving a good value. My compliments to Cabinet for following up on that.

Lastly, I wanted to mention that I see real opportunities for how we design and schedule infrastructure projects so they stimulate local contracts and high labour and local labour and local contract participation from the communities in which they occur. I do see major opportunities. We’ve talked about that at committee and perhaps even as a large group in Caucus. I don’t think we’re doing a good job yet at following up on those opportunities. It does take some work. It means we need to break down projects. We need to design projects with that in mind so that they are appropriately scaled and so on, to the sorts of resources that the community that they’re being built in have. It may be a little bit challenging to do, but I think it’s time for some really comprehensive thinking. The benefits from such an approach would be huge in many, many, many ways that address many of our broad government goals. I continue to push that and look forward to the Minister’s comments.