Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would like to welcome the Minister and deputy minister here today. I do want to applaud the work of the department here. As I said in my reply to the budget address the other day, it is a daunting task and a lot of hard work goes into putting together a document of this magnitude. So I do want to commend the department and the Minister for providing the guidance and leadership to make this happen.

As you’ve heard from some of my previous colleagues here, there are some good things on the horizon which we should be very proud of. One of them is the Mackenzie Valley Fibre Optic Link. I was there with the Minister right from the beginning here and I saw the good things that this will actually open up for the North on a business perspective. I do challenge, though, the department to see if we can look at capitalizing that investment over 20 years. I am challenging the department to see if we can capitalize that investment over a shorter period of time. The more satellite dishes we can get, the sooner we’re able to pay that off. I would like to see the revenue streams from that investment affect my generation a little bit. I know the revenue streams will definitely affect future generations, but I think our generation here, hopefully, would be deserving of seeing some of the fruits of that labour sooner than later. So that is a challenge, Mr. Chair.

Of course, currently the committee is working on the Financial Administration Act. This is a fairly large piece of, I guess, a review. We’re right in the midst of doing that, so I’m looking forward to finding ways to see if we can help the department work a bit more efficiently and still maintain the transparency of government, and I’ll definitely be speaking to that in due course.

That said, as you heard from other Members here, there are still some concerns that many of us have, including myself. I’m no stranger to pointing out some of the opportunities in finance and have done so since my term and my tenure here. Again, I agree with the Minister, this is a $2 billion business – and it is a business, Mr. Chair – and with any type of business of this magnitude, sometimes it’s important that some of the smaller things be brought to light. Some of them could be maybe an oversight, maybe not an important one at this point, but I think, again, if we work together in addressing

some of these smaller issues, that might take the pressure off some of the larger ones.

Just to talk in a general sense – and I’ll try to deal a little bit more with this in detail as we approach each of the activities – first and foremost, the issue of maximizing tax revenues, especially those involving self-reporting taxes. I have to admit I’ve seen some progress on this file from the infancy stage that I brought this forward to this House, not many years ago, to do a full review and collecting of these self-reporting taxes. Specifically, I started off with tobacco. Lately I’ve added petroleum to that mix, only because I feel that transparency in any self-reporting taxes will definitely help the bottom line, plus overall transparency in general. Are we there yet, Mr. Chair? We’re getting closer, but I think we have opportunity, and I’m hoping the Minister and the deputy ministers see that as well. It’s not just about auditing or more audits or having more auditors, it’s about getting rid of the loopholes and removing those opportunities where this could be misused.

Mr. Chair, you’re going to hear me talk a little bit later today about third-party recoveries, and I believe that again there are opportunities in there and some of the numbers we’ll see and talk about in the budget will reflect that.

What’s interesting is our medical recoveries, specifically with some of the third parties, are a bit of a question mark. It’s not a big dollar figure with respect to the overall Finance budget, but it’s when a little later on that you’ll see me bring a bit of attention only because I believe, as I said, there are always opportunities in every budget, unless the Minister wants to comment on that right now.

That said, we know that the Minister has talked in the past about a Revenue Stabilization Fund. He’s mentioned that in one of his budget addresses, I believe in 2012-13. This is a fund that actually looks at stabilizing revenues when there are deficit periods. This has been relatively quiet for the last little bit. I’m hoping that this is not falling off the radar. I’m hoping this Revenue Stabilization Fund might be still something of value for even a $2 billion corporation. There is merit in planning for the future, especially in those dry deficit years, which I believe we are facing.

I would also like to talk, just very briefly, about recently when the CFIB rated the GNWT with probably the worst grade that one can get with respect to red tape. Now, I mean, this could be disputed and, by all accounts, I’ve read the rebuttals. I’ve read the testimonials as to possibly where this very daunting grade is coming from, but that said, I’m still feeling that there’s a pushback from government to say that CFIB is picking on the GNWT and that its matrix and analysis is not being fair. I don’t want to dispute the issue of fairness; I want to dispute the issue of merit. I want to dispute

the issue of the measurable. Again, without getting into great detail here, this will be something that I will be following up either today in Committee of the Whole or later on, but I believe that we need to pay particular attention. When you have the worst grade in the country, it should beg the question why. Are we making progress? If that’s the issue, and if so, what is the plan of action so that we can get on the right side of red tape?

The other issue that I know has been brought up very briefly here and some other Members have talked about it and I certainly have talked about this in the House many times, is the issue of our debt and the issues behind debt and debt management. I agree. I mean, we are hitting a fiscal cliff, as the Minister has pointed out in his opening address. We’ve been there many times, especially in the last year with our limited capacity to borrow more money for future investment and future infrastructure. I would be remiss if I didn’t remind the department here that debt is really no different than an iceberg. An iceberg, you see debt, it’s visual, you can see the top part of the iceberg, but it’s what’s hidden under water out of sight which really is the bulk of work of your debt. Even though some of that debt is self-liquidating by design, and then even that could be somewhat disputed to a certain degree, it’s all the other aspects of debt and liabilities, contingent liabilities, anything that involves our complete debt line.

I liken it to the fact that we can call it as it is, we can define it as it is, but at the end of the day it’s still debt, and I think some of us are a bit nervous as to how much more debt we can take on. I do challenge the government to, I guess, resolve the issue of that boogeyman out there in terms of can we take on more debt, can we afford more debt. The Minister has come on record saying that this is something we need and we have to do, but still to this day I have yet to see any degree of showmanship explaining that we can take on more debt. What are the matrices? What are the tools convincing every one of us, all 11 Members here, including the House, that we can handle whether it’s $200 million more or a billion dollars more of debt. I think we owe that explanation to ourselves. We owe that explanation to the people we serve, because it’s only through consensus that we’re able to mitigate that debt once the debt borrowing limit is brought before the floor of the House so we can debate that then.

The last thing I want to talk about, and again, as I said, I’ll bring it up in detail, is I applaud the department for maintaining their active workforce to 265 employees, but what I found interesting is that the compensation and benefits increased well beyond collective bargaining, which I found to be problematic. As again, and we’ll get into detail, the increase is 7.7 percent and yet we haven’t changed any bodies in any particular department per se, and

so that will definitely raise the question or whether the Minister wants to raise it now, but I will bring it back up in detail.

Last but not least is the fact that the overall expenditure category for this budget has changed significantly since we talked about this in October. Now, I can’t talk about a number that was never before the House, but I can assure the House that we are seeing, in terms of the expenditure category in this department, a much larger number than what was presented to committee. I’m concerned that growth was well over $4 million. This is something to which I would probably need some explanation as to why. What was it that we didn’t foresee a few months ago when we were doing the pre-work coming into today’s deliberations or what was tabled before the House?

I’ll leave it at that. As I said, I do have more specifics as we get into the various activities. By and large, it’s a pretty tight budget and for certain aspects I’m pleased. Other aspects, I believe we do have some work before us.