Thank you, Mr. Chair. I see this supp includes a special warrant, which I appreciate. I think this is an important opportunity, obviously, for us to be commenting on special warrants when they come forward in supps like this. It’s an important opportunity for Members of this House to share their perspectives, and special warrants, as we know, are expenditures that are made on an emergency basis typically almost by definition when it has to be done and we really can’t afford to go through the process of approval at the time, but it does allow a retrospective look at things and public discussion, especially as in this one where we have amounts like $47 million-plus.
I note that there are at least two very significant expenditures that were totally unexpected when we started the year. Obviously, an amazing fire season, very costly and certainly extensive. So we’re dealing with a supp here of $47 million to deal with that, $47.4 million. That’s an unexpected amount, and given that we fight tooth and nail to come up with $15 million or $18 million for new initiatives every year, that does put that $47 million… That’s about three years of special initiatives, new initiative money gone up in smoke.
Then, of course, there’s the $20 million, which we heard about earlier today, the discussion about the complete lack of consultation with Members. Again, an unexpected cost that we should have had input on, but a unilateral decision by Cabinet to do that. Again, significant decision without being in line with our consensus government principles, but an unexpected cost. So now we’re dealing with this supp in this fiscal year or the current fiscal year with $67.4 million of unexpected expenditures. Now, that’s a very significant amount of money at any point in our history, but particularly given our current fiscal status. We’re trying to bump up our borrowing limits wherever we can by hundreds of millions of dollars. The impact of this, of course, will be felt reverberating through the 18th Assembly and
this is even before we get to supps on the capital expenditures.
So I guess there’s nothing we can do about forest fires other than deal with climate change to try to get that sort of thing in line. I don’t think we’ve been doing a good job on that front. It does speak to that sort of thing even though we’re here to deal with dollars. What the dollars reflect is whether or not we’re doing a good job on other fronts. With climate change, of course, that reflects on governments around the world. We’re in line in terms of not dealing with it, despite our opportunity to play a real leadership role here. Then, of course, there’s the $20 million without any discussion about how we
might mitigate those impacts through wiser expenditures.
I just wanted to note my concerns in case the Minister wasn’t aware of those. I’m sure he was, but I think it’s important for the public that in fact this government is throwing around, really, by the time we’re done here, hundreds of millions of dollars in unexpected costs and this is definitely going to be affecting our fiscal status and the 18th Assembly
and so on. I’m not going to be proud walking out the door if I don’t return next term and leave the 18th Assembly with some of the things that I see coming down the pike because of these sorts of decisions.
I’ll leave it at that as general comments. Thank you.