Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'm looking here at a $500 million capital budget, and I think the question we all need to ask ourselves is how are we going to pay for this?
We know our fiscal responsibility policy allows us to pay for 50 percent of this with debt and based on all of the previous public accounts, it's quite likely that 50 percent of this will be paid for by debt.
It's worth noting that about $200 million of this is federal dollars. I think that fact is important because it shows that we are still largely driven by federal priorities. But also the allure of 75-cent dollars is largely a myth. We're actually operating at 40-cent dollars from the federal government when we look at what is being funded. I don't think the hard work has been put in to the capital budget to make those tough decisions and to prioritize maximum spending.
We also know that this is a capital budget that, in many ways, is still the last Assembly's capital budget and is still driving the last Assembly's priorities, and that's just the reality of some of these long-term infrastructure projects. They will be on the books for many many Assemblies to come.
A bit to the kind of procedural aspects, I don't believe we actually have any sense of what this capital budget will cost us. And I mean that in a number of ways.
There is $47 million largely for long-term care facilities in this but we know that long-term care beds, each bed costs over a hundred thousand dollars a year to operate. We also know our health authority is running a massive deficit. I don't know how we are building those beds without having proper costing to be provided in the operations budget for the health department already running a deficit.
We know that there's $84 million in here largely for roads, and we know that roads cost a lot of money to maintain, and our current roads are not being maintained properly. We know our deferred maintenance budget for all of our capital is just millions and millions of dollars in debt. Our infrastructure is crumbling, and here we are building more.
I don't believe hard decisions have been made. I don't believe there's a connection between capital and operations that this government has taken seriously. Every time we add capital, that means a cut to an operation's budget. That is the way to look at it. It could mean debt, which is just a cut for a later time. But when we spend money here and then when we don't include the money to actually maintain that infrastructure, we are just setting ourselves up for disaster.
There's a couple of projects that are continuing on for the Power Corp, over $200 million worth of Power Corp infrastructure for the complete cost of projects, here - the Fort Providence transmission line, and Inuvik wind, most importantly. But we know our Power Corp's infrastructure is billions of dollars in debt. We know that when we build infrastructure for the Power Corp, it's not revenue generating. Ratepayers are -- it's cost passed on to ratepayers in increases in rates.
Building a line to Fort Providence may be a good idea, but the people of Fort Providence are not paying for that line. It is not anything that actually makes us money. We all know there is a massive infrastructure deficit. We know the state of our infrastructure is in terrible state. We know our fiscal cliff is approaching, and it is an unsustainable path. However, when I look at the disconnect between our government's priorities, the operating budget and this capital budget, I just can't help but think that proper thought and strategic direction was not put in it. I think that is no more apparent than the two percent of this budget that is going towards housing.
Housing is a priority of this Assembly. It is a priority of every single Member in here. And only two percent of this is to build new houses. I cannot reconcile that fact with the political priorities of this House, Madam Chair.
And for some reason, we treat housing completely different. If we -- you know, we are spending $21.7 million for schools in this budget, and then we go and ask the school boards or the department to find the O and M to run those schools. For housing, we don't do that. We are so concerned about 2038 and the O and M for operating housing, and we do the math every time we build a housing unit, whether we have the funding to maintain it.
And yet here we are with 500 other million dollars where we've done none of the math. We've not done the math on what it costs to make sure that we're not having a differed maintenance backlog. We have not done the math to make sure that our highways and bridges are properly maintained. There is an obsession that we can just build capital and it doesn't -- and it maintains itself.
We need to make sure that every time we build something, the O and M is there, the care and maintenance of there -- is there, and that's not being done. The only place it seems to be even considered is in housing, and that's why we won't build any more housing.
So Madam Chair, I am frustrated that once again I see $10.6 million as a somewhat made up number for housing, and I can't seem to get the Housing Corp to actually build more housing.
I would gladly cut two percent of this budget to double the Housing Corp's two percent. But I guess I will start with a question. Thank you for indulging me.
Can the Minister of Finance give me a sense of what the O and M cost is of this capital budget is. If we build this $500 million worth of infrastructure across a variety of departments, how much money should we reasonably expect to see increased in the operating budget. Thank you, Madam Chair.