Thank you, Mr. Chair. I know that our government's capital spending is typically focused on transportation, and often a large project or two along with that. This current budget seems to fit that pattern and, as the Minister noted, the government proposes to spend about $80 million on transportation projects and a bit more than that on the Stanton Territorial Hospital. These are all important projects for a variety of reasons. For me, it is all about better services and opportunities for residents of the Northwest Territories, whether that is health, a safer airport, or a new road into a community.
The government proposes to spend just shy of $300 million on capital projects in 2017-2018, and I commend them for that. Besides being useful infrastructure, this spending creates jobs and business opportunities that are vital to a healthy economy and healthy communities. I'm not sure that every project meets the standard of delivering the biggest bang for our buck, but I will put comments on that aside until we deal with specific departments.
Another thing that concerns me is the lack of diversity in our capital spending. I would like to see our capital spending do more to help broaden our economy and reduce the future costs of living in the Territory. Both of these goals are in the mandate we unanimously approved back in March. I would like to see our capital spending as closely aligned to the priorities in our mandate as possible in future.
Lastly, similar to my colleague, I am very concerned about one other thing. The Capital Estimates as they were tabled last week would have us consider investments for a department that does not exist. The Department of Infrastructure is proposed for next year as a merger of the Departments of Transportation and Public Works and Services. There is always a chance the merger will not happen. Until such time as it is approved in this House, we should be considering capital funding for existing departments. Those are my general comments. Thank you, Mr. Chair.