Thank you, Mr. Chair. What my point was: I was waiting for an opportunity for all Members to have their general comments. I thought, after that, I would reply to them as a whole. I thought we might have had one or two more Members who were going to make general comments. My apologies if I didn't catch that. I would like an opportunity just to respond to a couple of comments in general before we get into the detail.
This is a huge capital budget. There was some concern with the capacity. Because we are having so much money flow out the door, there will be some concerns with capacity, but we are taking steps to address that. Carry-overs were another concern. We have full concern with carry-overs. Part of that, sometimes, in the arrangements with the federal government, they require a bit more information. It takes us a little longer to try to get the projects out the door, not just information from us, but information from the areas that the projects are going into.
I think a good example is the maintenance camp that the Member for Mackenzie Delta made reference to, where it was supposed to be. The location it is in now is actually probably the best location. Because of concerns raised by the Indigenous governments up there, we have tried to work with them to find a location that was agreeable to all. That has taken a bit of time. I think this was on the books for last summer, maybe even the summer before.
Some of the questions around the money for communities, Members know that we put some money into the overall CPI funding, as I said before, was $27 million in 2000 for years, where you have about $29. That will only address part of the problem.
I do know there is a concern from the communities with the O and M funding. We have tried to make some arrangements with them on that. There will be an opportunity for the first budget in the 19th Legislative Assembly to speak to the O and M funding. I think, in this government, we put $8 million towards the over O and M funding. I would like to think that made a bit of an impact. Then, a lot of it, the costs are going up every year to do business. We tried to work with them on that.
This is a huge infrastructure budget. I think it is probably the largest one we have ever had in this government. I think $132 million of that is money that we were able to leverage from the federal government, which would allow us to put more projects on the ground and see more of our people working. I would like to get to the point where our capacity, with all the work that we have done, is so good that our folks would be able to just take advantage of all this money.
We hear concerns about contracts being let, firms from down south bidding on them. Because they have the low bid, they are given the project. They bring in all their own people, and there is not much benefit for local businesses or workers. We try to work into a lot of our projects where they take advantage. Those are still going to happen, but we have taken great steps, I think, in trying to ensure that all the local businesses and workers are able to take advantage of some of the capacity.
Again, this is a huge capital budget, and I've come to the realization that sometimes it doesn't really matter how good it may be for the people of the Northwest Territories. There's always going to be opposition to it, and some of the opposition I've seen from day one of this Assembly, and that's fine. Some of the opposition to this I've seen in the last couple of days, because we have a period coming up there where Members are going to have to hit the campaign trail. What I respect is the fact that there were some messages that I heard today that I heard from the first day of this Assembly, and those messages haven't changed. I've got respect for that.
We're all concerned, but this is a good opportunity to create some employment for the people of the Northwest Territories. The schools that we need to build will have children to put in them because we have opportunities for their parents to work; then they can go to school. We don't want them to be going to school in jurisdictions outside the Northwest Territories. Thank you, Mr. Chair.