Merci, Monsieur le President. I'm pretty exhausted. I don't have any formal speaking notes, I don't know how anybody else has managed to pull theirs together. But, you know, it's well known that I fundamentally disagree with Cabinet's fiscal framework that perpetuates overspending on capital, some of which is directed at large infrastructure projects of dubious merit and value.
I criticized this Cabinet for its lack of attention to raising revenues in my reply to the budget address. I advocated for one or more tax brackets for high income earners. I think that we can retain greater benefits from mineral exploration and development by retaining or capturing more royalties from mining and other measures that I identified in my reply to the budget address.
However, I was certainly happy to work with my regular MLA colleagues to secure some compromises and improvements to the budget, and those were highlighted yesterday by the Minister of Finance. And, you know, it was a difficult and challenging process that we went through but those changes that we secured as regular MLAs by working together included, you know, additional funding for housing and for homelessness. And although $4 million as a permanent increase to O and M funding for the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation may not sound like a lot on a $2.2 billion budget, I think it starts to head us in a better direction.
I support additional funding for homelessness shelters and for heritage centres as well.
I think there was a very significant commitment made on nongovernmental organization multiyear funding that will allow for inflationary increases to their funding. I think that's a really significant commitment that Cabinet has made, and I really look forward to that being implemented.
I support increasing tobacco taxes and a reduction in contracted services that were proposed by the -- or committed to by the Minister of Finance as well.
I did mention that I believe this was a very difficult process of negotiating changes, but I certainly appreciate the collaborative approach that was taken in the spirit of compromise, and it's I think a vast difference in approach from how we approached this in the last Assembly. So I want to give my Cabinet colleagues and the Minister of Finance some credit for that.
And I guess in conclusion, Mr. Speaker, I can see my way to support this budget with the reservations that I mentioned earlier. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.