Mr. Speaker, this process is started. We’ve been using passive restraint and fiscal prudence discipline. We’ve been working on that. Things have changed in southern jurisdictions that have affected our formula, the original escalator in terms of the money they spend, and other things that are dragging down our formula overall. Our own-source revenues are growing at about 3.7 percent. They’re projected to continue to grow. But when you look at some of the fiscal problems down south with the larger provinces, other provinces where they have severe challenges with their own budgets and debt and balancing their books as well as what the federal government is doing, it means we’ve been on this for a while.
So it starts now. I mentioned to the press this morning, we already have in Fort Smith the local housing folks on strike. We know we have collective agreements coming due, starting right away with
the Power Corporation, and very shortly after that as we move forward into the 18th Assembly just
about all the collective agreements are going to come due. We’re going to need to sit down and negotiate fair but affordable agreements that are going to reflect the need to keep our expenditures and our revenues in sync. We cannot have our expenditure growth exceed our revenue growth. That discussion is going to happen and that will lead to looking at how we manage the programs and services, things like vacancy rates, if we have to make choices, what are they? But there are very real things that are now underway and this budget, we’ve been setting the stage for that and this budget continues to lay out that plan.