Thank you, Mr. Chair. My understanding is it's about $1.2 million for this fiscal year.

Thank you. Mr. Vanthuyne.

Okay. The reason why I raise this, Mr. Chair, is because I appreciate that we are not experts in certain fields and we need to hire and form agreements. We just talked about that, in fact, over here as it related to the Heritage Fund, about getting experts to manage certain things. That said, though, when I look at other jurisdictions that are responsible for their information super-highways, Alberta is a good example. The Government of Alberta maintenance ownership over that asset and then might have a small contractor managing the technical aspects of it, but they get to generate significant revenue off of it by leasing, for lack of knowing the technical term, but essentially "leasing space out" to those who have an interest in accessing the information highway. I think that it would have been an excellent opportunity for us in the arrangement that we made with regard to this fibre optic line to find a way in which this could have ended up being a much larger revenue generator for us as a government. It seems to me that, clearly, we are paying an abundance of money to a manager, and yet we are making very little on the other end in terms of revenue. So how long do we have this agreement in place, and is there a future opportunity to renegotiate a financial situation that is going to be more beneficial to northern ratepayers? Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The agreement is for 20 years. This was a P3 partnership, and so we are paying fees on that, and we make $1.2 million. As far as renegotiating, I am not sure if there is an opportunity to renegotiate. Maybe I will go to our fibre-line expert through you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. Mr. Kalgutkar.

Thank you. Mr. Vanthuyne, your time has expired. Anyone further? Seeing none, I will call this activity. Finance, management board secretariat, operations expenditure summary, $76,734,000. Does committee agree?

Thank you, committee. Please turn to the fifth activity, Office of the Comptroller General. Comments or questions? Seeing none, I will call the activity. Finance, Office of the Comptroller General, operations expenditure summary, $64,933,000. Does committee agree?

Thank you, committee. Committee, we have an information item at the end of this department. Comments or questions? Seeing none, we will return to the departmental total, which is found on page 135. As I stated earlier, we will leave the borrowing plan until after we are done with the department, and then we will move to the borrowing plan. If we have comments or questions on the totals, the organizational charts, or the revenue summary, now is the time to ask them. Mr. Vanthuyne.

Thank you. Mr. Stewart.

Thank you. Seeing nothing further, I will call the departmental total. Finance, total department, $258,202,000. Does committee agree?

Thank you, committee. Does committee agree that this concludes our consideration of the Department of Finance?

Thank you, committee. I will ask the Minister and the witnesses to stay put, as we are now moving to the borrowing plan. It is the second blue tab in the document. Right after the summary tab, we see a blue tab that says "borrowing plan." As is our tradition and the requirement, we will go through this and vote on this item. First, I have Mr. Vanthuyne for comments or questions.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just a couple of things that I have. I always find it interesting when I see the word "contingency" when it comes to government spending. It seems like, in our borrowing here, we've identified in certain line items "contingency." I appreciate the asterisk here that says, "Contingency amounts are based on the estimated working capital requirements during the year, which can vary significantly." What I'm trying to understand is, how does borrowing even have a contingency to begin with? This could be totally an ignorant question, but I'm trying to understand this. I'm a project manager by background, and I've always recognized, in my previous years in working with the government, that government, or I should say taxpayers at large, don't really approve of contingencies. So I'm trying to understand, what does "contingency" as it relates to Government of the Northwest Territories borrowing? Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. There's no such thing as a stupid question, Mr. Vanthuyne. Mr. Stewart.

Thank you. Mr. Vanthuyne.