Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The GNWT's economic recovery must be built on strong foundations, and in our case, those foundations are our communities and our municipal governments, Mr. Speaker. Before we want to grow and expand our mandate, we must make sure that our municipalities are taken care of. However, in this case, that foundation is crumbling, quite literally. Our municipal roads, sewers, and basic infrastructure are degrading from the lack of maintenance and unstable footings.

Mr. Speaker, we de-fund our municipalities $9.6 million in operations and maintenance, $6.5 million in environmental, $24.3 million in capital, for a total of $40.4 million every single year. I am happy to hear the Minister's statement today about an additional $2.6 million as well as the $4.7 million to address the significant lost revenues and work they took on during COVID. However, Mr. Speaker, this is not a long-term solution. We agreed to a municipal funding formula, and then, in typical GNWT fashion, we failed to implement it or provide the money.

If we do not agree with the funding formula, then we must go back to the table and renegotiate it. The problem is we designed this formula, and we have not followed up with the money in hand, Mr. Speaker. I am appreciative of the mandate commitment to reduce the funding gap by $5 million, and perhaps there is some work, as the Minister spoke about today, in regard to land transfer, working with revenues to reduce another $5 million. However, we are still a long way off from reducing that gap. As we barrel into our debt wall and are about to approve one of the largest capital budgets in NWT history, largely due to carry-overs because we cannot get the money out the door, it's insulting to our communities, Mr. Speaker. They can get their money out the door, and far better than us, they will make sure it is spent in our communities and employs local Northerners.

Mr. Speaker, we in this House do not deserve to build multi-billion-dollar infrastructure projects when our communities cannot make sure their roads and sewers are funded. I will have questions for the Minister of MACA on whether MACA will bring forward legislation to give municipalities some certainty and a real path forward to close this gap. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.