Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I wish to table the following two documents: Conference of Management Authorities Species at Risk Annual Report 2022-2023; and, the NWT Species at Risk Annual Report 2022-2023. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Minister. Tabling of documents. Notices of motion. Motions. Notices of motion for the first reading of bills. First reading of bills. Second reading of bills. Consideration in Committee of the Whole of bills and other matters, Bill 23, Committee Report 52-19(2), Committee Report 53-19(2), Minister's Statement 264-19(2), Tabled Document 681-19(2), Tabled Document 973 and 974-19(2), with Member for Inuvik Twin Lakes in the chair.

I now call Committee of the Whole to order. What is the wish of committee? Member for Frame Lake.

Merci, Madam la Presidente. Committee wishes to consider Tabled Document 973-19(2) Capital Estimates 2024-2025 and Tabled Document 974-19(2) Supplementary Estimates (Operations Expenditures), No. 3, 2023-2024. Mahsi.

Thank you. Does committee agree?

Thank you, committee. We will take a short recess and resume with the first item.

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I now call Committee of the Whole back to order. Committee, we've agreed to consider Tabled Document 973-19(2), 2024-2025 Capital Estimates. Does the Minister of Finance have any opening remarks?

Thank you, Madam Chair. Yes, I am here to present the Government of the Northwest Territories 2024-2025 Capital Estimates, the last capital budget of the 19th Legislative Assembly. This budget builds on our commitment to tabling a capital budget that is achievable while still addressing the priorities and needs of Northwest Territories residents.

These capital estimates propose:

• $361 million in expenditures to support and continue infrastructure investment in our communities. Major highlights of this capital budget include:
• $94.2 million for highways, winter roads, bridges and culverts. Key investments in this area includes funding of $26.4 million for the Frank Channel Bridge and $18.9 million for the advancement of the environmental assessments and planning work for the Mackenzie Valley Highway and Slave Geologic Province All-Season Road;
• $73 million in funding to support community governments for their infrastructure needs;.
• $62.6 million for various airport and runway projects under the Disaster Mitigation Adaption Fund, Investing in Canada Infrastructure Plan and the Department of National Defence;
• $55 million for planning and construction of long-term care facilities, health centres, improvements to health information systems, and biomedical equipment, including $20 million for the Health Centre in Tulita, $11.9 million for the Wellness and Recovery Centre in Yellowknife, and $10.9 million for the construction of a long-term care facility in Hay River;
• $26.2 million for renewable energy projects, including $18 million for the development of the Fort Providence transmission line.

The planned capital expenditures are offset by a total of $172.2 million in support from the federal government through various infrastructure programs, including $50.5 million from the Department of National Defence, $47.2 million from the Investing in Canada Infrastructure Plan, $35.1 million from the National Trade Corridors Fund, $11.9 million from the Green and Inclusive Building Program, $7.2 million from the Disaster Mitigation and Adaptation Fund, $5.5 million from the Building Canada Plan; and $14.8 million from other partnerships.

That concludes my opening remarks, and I would be happy to answer questions that Members may have.

Thank you, Minister. Do any Members wish to make general comments before we consider the tabled document in detail? Member for Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh.

Thank you, Madam Chair. No, I just got general comments overall. But I've been here for almost a year and a half in this position, and I continue to advocate our wishes of what I've been hearing from my leadership in Lutselk'e; for example, you know, winter roads, and I've been bringing this issue forward. There was no commitment by this government. This was no commitment to undertake a study or anything like that for the need to put a road into the community of Lutselk'e, a winter road. And, you know, like, it's hard for me to sit here to go through this budget again. And, really, you know, when I advocate for projects in our communities in the last year and a half but it goes onto deaf ears. And I know that the Assembly had -- in 2019 to 2023, had a four-year mandate, and no matter what I said and to advocate for the community of Fort Resolution as well and Dettah and N'dilo, it seems to go onto deaf ears. And even if I try and put stuff on the moving train that's been going over a four-year period, it bounces off the train. I know the Premier had made commitments about trying to get, you know, my luggage onto the train but it hasn't happened. And, you know, so it's -- yeah, you know, I hear and see what you guys are talking about in terms of this budget. It's really tough. And, you know, I'll -- I'll have to keep thinking about it because last year when we did the budget in March, I didn't support it for those reasons. You know, we -- you know, we need infrastructure in our communities. And, again, I don't see it. But anyway, I just want to make that as a general comment. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Member for Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh. Are there any other general comments? Member for Yellowknife North.

Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair. I've long had issues with the formatting of the way we present the capital estimates, largely because it's an accounting document, but I -- you know, I think you could go to any single municipality and see how they do their capital planning. They essentially have a get chart that shows you what year a project will start, what year it will finish, the total cost of that project, and you can kind of look through time what's planned weekly. We do not provide the total costs of projects in our capital estimates. We believe that that it will affect procurement. I don't buy that argument. And we seem quite bad at getting fair value for dollar on a lot of our contracts and committing them on time. You know, I could go through, as I've done in years past, almost every single project and ask the same three questions: How much is this total project going to cost? How much federal money did we get from it? How is it being tendered? You know, basic questions. But I really don't think I should have to answer those questions. I think that that should be presented with the capital estimates.

I've been promised for years now some sort of dashboard. I don't quite know what's going to be in the dashboard but I'm told that it will track projects as they progress and hopefully will track overages and change orders and delays and perhaps even some reasoning. But I remain cautiously optimistic that one day we will have a dashboard.

I guess to reiterate what I said in my statement today, really, I think the perfect example of this is the Taltson hydro expansion. The government is asking for an undisclosed amount. They won't tell us how much publicly they're asking for the Taltson hydro expansion in this document, and yet they won't tell us how much the project costs. I just can't understand any reason I can't have a general estimate of what that project costs. Is it a billion? Is it $2 billion? That is all I want to know so I can have a coherent conversation about it.

Absence some -- like, this is our last kick at the can but I just can't see myself supporting these capital estimates absent some progress being made on either that dashboard, on the costs of projects, on getting a copy of that Taltson business case, on just any sort of recognition that the way we are doing this is lacking in transparency. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you. Are there any further questions? Member for Thebacha.

Thank you, Member. Are there any further general comments? Member for Hay River South.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Yeah, you know, I went through the budget and, you know, what's in there is in there, I guess. Well, we're never all going to be happy with what's in there but, you know, we've got a little bit for all our communities and for, you know, highway work and that type of thing. But I guess what I would just like to state, I guess, is that, you know, we are going into election, you know, government's going to kind of slow down here a bit. Contractors, some of them have been, you know, impacted by the fires as well so they've been out of work, some of them for -- for, you know, several weeks, and they're going to be looking for something to sustain them, you know, while we do this transition. So I would just like to send the message to the other side is that make sure that we get, you know, the work continues, we get work -- we get contracts out there and so that we can make sure that our small, medium, and large-sized businesses continue to work. Thank you.

Thank you. Member for Frame Lake.

Yeah, thanks, Madam Chair. I do have a few questions if I can, and then a few comments. I'd like to know how much of this is carryovers from the previous fiscal year? Thank you.

We're just doing general comments right now. If you want to save your questions for the -- okay, sorry, I stopped your time.

Thanks, Madam Chair, for stopping the time on me. Okay, well, I'll offer a few comments, then.

So I guess I want to start with page 2, the introduction and, you know, I continue to point out that the biggest part of our capital budget is highways and roads at 26 percent. Housing is 4 percent. When our government continues to spend, you know, six times as much on highways and roads as we spend on housing -- and I understand that this is probably not -- doesn't include some federal money and so on, but this is money that we're spending, and when our government continues to spend six times as much on roads versus housing, there's something wrong, fundamentally wrong with the way that we do our budgeting and we allocate our resources, period. Look, roads are important. I get it. I had to drive out of here during the evacuation. But that's it, right there. Anybody wants to know what the priorities of this government are, look at page 2. We're spending way, way more than roads and highways than on housing. It says it all to me.

So when I get the Minister in front of us, we will find out that there's very significant carryovers from the previous years, although there's this $260 million cap on capital spending. It's actually a lot more than that. A lot of this is carryovers. We just cannot -- continually cannot get the money out the door. Doesn't matter what we do. We just cannot spend the money. And that leads to very significant overbudgeting again and again and again. I don't think I've actually voted in favour of a capital budget in the eight years I've been an MLA because of the significant overbudgeting on the capital side because then you have to build up a surplus to be able to spend money on capital, which you don't actually end up spending at the end of the day, which means you have to cut and scrimp and save money on the O and M side, programs and services that our people need. That's what it comes down to. That's what the overbudgeting on the capital ends up doing. It means we're not spending money on people on their basic human needs. And that's why I'll continue to oppose the capital budgets that this Cabinet brings forward.

The other thing that I'm particularly concerned about and I'll ask the Minister when we get her in front of us is the new fiscal situation. I listened to her very carefully. She delivered a fiscal update today in terms of, you know, the unexpected expenditures from fires and so on. I don't think there's been anything changed in this capital budget as a result of that. That's not a good place to be. We're going to run a deficit. The Premier said it. It's in the news. We're going to run a deficit because of these unexpected expenditures. But I don't sense that anything's changed. It's business as usual. That's just not good financial management. And we're leaving the next Assembly in a very difficult position because of this continued overbudgeting on the capital side.

I could say a bunch of things about some of these individual projects, and I'll probably save some of that for when we get to the line items, Madam Chair. But there's no way I can support this budget when we continue to spend way more on roads than we do on housing. Wrong priorities. And I just disagree with Cabinet fundamentally on this since day one. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Member. Member for Monfwi.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, I see here as capital estimates, it would be nice that, you know -- to see Tlicho region in this as well because there's North Slave region at 22 percent. I would like to know how much money is going to be spent in Tlicho region. It doesn't have anything like that here. I see the roads. It's $94 million. And I'm grateful, thankful that, you know, Frank Channel Bridge is on there. But Frank Channel Bridge is a benefit for the Northwest Territories.

And I'm kind of a little bit disappointed because for the school, it says $3 million. Like, we have a lot of schools in the Northwest Territories that needs upgrade. Some of our schools are over 50 years old. Even the Sahtu. In Tlicho, you know, like, that's what we keep saying that we need a new school. And I know there is a study, and the Minister has said that before because it is in the -- they're doing their own little studies. And, like, it's -- I know it's going to get -- you know, it's -- we're going to get our new school eventually, I know that. But it's just that why $3 million? I mean, that's, like -- and for a few upgrades. And a lot of school needs some minor and major repair. And this budget is disappointing. Yes, we do have -- we have a housing crisis. We have a lot of homeless people. And more should have been given over there because even in my region, we have a lot of people on the waitlist for family units, and we don't have that. And we have -- we have a warming shelter. We have a lot of homeless people. And if some of those people cannot be accommodated in Tlicho region, what do they do? They come to Yellowknife and they become Yellowknife problems, and we don't want that. We would like to take care of our own people back home, but we don't have a lot of housing. We do have housing issues. We have housing crisis. A lot of social problems. A lot of addiction issues, mental health. And we do need more of those programs and services, and it's not reflected in this budget. There's not much.

And we have a lot of aging infrastructure too as well. We have over 50-year-old water pipe system in Edzo that needs a major repair, that needs to be replaced. We have a lot of school that needs, you know, replacement or a lot of school repair. And also a lot of our government building needs to be replaced as well. And it's disappointing to see this budget the way that it is -- it is written, and with the North Slave region, 22 percent. I would like to see Tlicho region in there so that way we will have a good estimate of how much money is going being spent in Tlicho region because there's four communities that I represent, and there is over 2,000 people that I do represent as well. Thank you.

Thank you. Member for Great Slave.