Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It’s a pleasure to talk today, of course, and I’m here to talk about the stabilization fund once again.

Our government builds its budget around the best guess estimates provided by the federal government, and for lack of better terms, it is a best guess. Those revenues that they predict for our territorial government are what they think they see are coming forward after last year’s estimates. But what do we do when it’s wrong? When the SS GNWT doesn’t get the cheque it was promised, what do we do then?

Over the years I have seen a number of budgets built and it certainly hasn’t met the expectations provided by the federal government, so a small territorial government like ours has limited ability to respond.

We need to build our finance estimates and a budget around a five-year rolling average. This would help stabilize our government when the money just doesn’t show up. When the money doesn’t show up it’s sort of a sink or swim situation.

If we planned accordingly, had good fiscal policy around this particular thing, we wouldn’t have the money like we do today already dreamt about and already spent before the first cheque shows up, like it already has been by this particular Cabinet.

Now, of course, I fully understand that this fiscal type of policy is exceptionally boring for the average person, because quite frankly, all they really want to know is are the lights on and will services be delivered. In most cases they are, but they don’t know the behind the scenes stuff such as our government has built, over the last 16 years, budgets around the fact that estimates have been wrong eight out of 16 times. They have been built around the best guess or early estimates provided by the federal government.

May I remind this government that this is not sound fiscal budgeting; this is budgeting by Ouija board for goodness sakes. I mean, we’re only waiting for some higher power to tell us what it may or may not

be delivering. When it doesn’t show up, we have no other choice than to be forced with drastic changes and where do we go from there?

What’s important to realize here is this: we could do something today. Now, the Finance Minister will try to distract us with his fancy words and his little fancy dancing moves and say the Government of the Northwest Territories has a triple 1A credit rating. Frankly, the average person just doesn’t care. They want to know we have sound budgeting and the programs will be there.

If we built a stabilization fund over a five-year rolling average, that would protect our finances when the federal government sends that cheque and we weren’t shortchanged on estimates that nobody knew what we were working off of. Best guesses don’t always work and we will have that discussion in question period later today. Thank you very much.