Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, in my reply to the budget address, I spoke of the process that led us to what we have been doing for the past several weeks in the Chamber of the House. Although I was dissatisfied with how that process played out and I felt we could have had more engagement on both sides of the House to build a budget we could all support, at the end of the day, we were forced into a situation where it has taken us to until this point to bring forward an appropriation bill.

In ideal circumstances, we would have more time to work on these issues to find a compromise. I think that is the real spirit of democracy. I have often said that, that it's not about making everyone happy, but it's about creating a budget or a bill or a proposal that everyone can live with, and that our constituents can live with as well. That is important, Mr. Speaker. I feel that we have done that with this appropriation bill.

I'm not going to speak at length to the contents of the bill itself and of the budget that we will moving forward with in 2018-2019, as I expect it will pass today, but I do want to say that many of the most troubling concerns around some of the directions the budget was taking with policy decisions and spending were resolved through the great amount of work that Members on both sides of the House did over the Committee of the Whole reviews that are often not as exciting as question period in the day-to-day business of the Assembly, but are very important because they allow us to ask these questions and do an in-depth review on each department's budget.

Ultimately, that work has been exhaustive. Every dollar has been accounted for. Every spending proposal has been questioned. At the end of the day, we have made progress on arts funding. We have had made progress on land tenure issues. We have made progress on environmental concerns. We have made progress on business support. There are other policies that will still need to be worked out. I expect we will spend the remainder of this term doing that, but again I can't look at this budget and see something I can't support. Rather, I see something that I acknowledge has taken a lot of work to get to the place it is today. That work has ultimately made a better budget, a more balanced document, and helped get the information contained within its pages out to our constituents so they understand how the government is spending their money on improving services and programs to Northwest Territories residents.

Finally, on the coming infrastructure budget and the need to continue to invest in that infrastructure budget, which is something I do support, the nature of our financial procedures requires us to pay for that infrastructure budget for what may appear as an operational surplus. It can also be thought of as the capital budget. What we don't spend on these programs and services, we are going to be spending on capital. I would disagree with the argument that it is potentially an area to cut services to pay for infrastructure. I think, rather, we need more common sense budgeting practices that allow everyone to understand exactly what we are doing when we move forward.

We are not posting surpluses year on year. We are paying for capital, and the way we do that is somewhat complex. We need plain language, common sense budgeting that everyone can follow along with, that everyone can understand, and that ultimately respects that there are two budgets in play here. One is capital and one is operations maintenance. That is the one before us today. That is how we pay for programs and services.

I'm satisfied that this government is using its limited resources in a time of reduced revenues to maximize the gains made to Northerners and to address the most pressing issues that Regular Members have brought to the floor of the House and has successfully championed over the last weeks of this sitting of the Legislative Assembly. I will be supporting the appropriation bill. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.