Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to let everyone know I will be voting against this infrastructure expenditure, Mr. Speaker. I think if you support building infrastructure in the Northwest Territories, then a supplementary appropriation which lapses $125 million is a very concerning sight. And I think if you believe that when the Assembly passes money and tells the GNWT to spend it and they don't, that's very concerning. And I know there's much debate about what exactly is being lapsed and will never come back versus what is being carried over and will probably make itself back on the project list in some sort of supplementary appropriation, but I want to give one tangible example.
This lapse is $1 million of deferred maintenance spending which the Department of Infrastructure didn't manage to spend, that will not be coming back. They have a fixed allocated budget for deferred maintenance and they didn't manage to spend $1 million of it this year despite our deferred maintenance backlog being $553, Mr. Speaker.
The department and the GNWT needs to get a plan in order that when we give them money for deferred maintenance, they spend it. And that's going to have to take some building capacity. It's going to have to take a lot of steps. But I think that is one particularly egregious example where I just can't support this infrastructure sups that takes $125 million out of our contractors in the North. And, you know, we said when we passed this budget, that it was the largest one in GNWT history. And well now with these lapses, that's no longer true, Mr. Speaker. Thank you.