Thank you, Madam Chair. I have a question on this page, as well, with regard to the forest management item and the fire suppression. Before I get there, I do want to make a comment about the impact the total amount of these supplementary estimates, the operations expenditures, are having on our budgeting, so to speak, the impact on our finances.
Prior to this supplementary estimate, this request for $29.8 million, we had a supplementary reserve. We set one up every year. We had about $23 million in our supplementary reserve. So you take the cost of this particular supplementary expenditure and it puts us in the hole some $26 million. You and I, Madam Chair, in our household budgeting wouldn't be able to put ourselves in the hole without getting ourselves into hot water and perhaps having to sell something off to pay for the deficit.
I appreciate that we have extraordinary circumstances, but either we need to increase our supplementary reserve in anticipation of extraordinary circumstances happening and the supplementary reserve is supposed to deal with the extraordinary circumstances that come up year to year. But we almost seem to be using the supplementary reserve for whatever it is we need it for and then when we come up against really extraordinary expenditures, such as fire suppression costs and/or low water surcharges for electricity, then we put ourselves deeply in the hole. It doesn't seem to really matter, and I know it has an impact on our financing because we have to borrow more money. It increases our costs on any number of things.
I would like to state that I think we are getting too free with being overdrawn in our supplementary reserve and I would caution Members and the Department of Finance to be really careful, more careful than they already are, about the impact all these expenditures have on our bottom line.
With regard to the special warrant and the $3.6 million that is being asked for fire suppression, thankfully we had a better year this year than we did last year, so we're not being asked to approve as much as we were asked to approve last year in a supp. However, I looked at the total cost of fire suppression this year and it comes out to some $57 million. Last year, I believe, it was quite a bit higher. It makes me wonder again, in terms of budgeting, we know we're liable to be stuck in a drought situation for another year or two, maybe three or four - hopefully not - but I again ask, why don't we budget the amount of money we are going to need more closely to the amount of money we actually end up spending?
When I first started, our fire suppression budget was a minimal amount. I think the amount in the budget was for an absolute perfect year and I think it's gradually been increased somewhat but I think we still under-budget what we require for fire suppression and I would like to ask why we don't put in a better number, a number that's closer to reality when we're budgeting for fire suppression. Thank you.