Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, to say it's been a bit of a grind these last couple of weeks I think is a bit of an understatement. Certainly, I know we've -- for those of us who it's our first time going through the budget process, certainly a learning experience and, yeah, and a long experience. Again, a big thanks to the staff that beared with us through this process.

I was going to say something cheeky about the Minister of Finance, but she works way too hard for me to do that. And I'm not going to lie, I'm a little bit scared of her as well so -- after the past three weeks.

Mr. Speaker, I'm going to be supporting this budget today and, listen, it's a balance. I know, you know, it's a balance when we come as Members from our constituents, we all have things we'd like to see in the budget, things that maybe we aren't so interested in the budget and, you know, we have to get through as a group. We understand that there's -- you know, we have some fiscal restraint that we need to look at for this government based on what's happened in previous governments, and I think we're heading in that right direction and I guess I commend everybody on that.

Having said that, of course, I'll continue as I have in this House, and I'm sure other Members will as well, to advocate for things that are in the budget, certainly partially, some things are in the budget wholeheartedly, but things that we'll continue to work towards. And, Mr. Speaker, I'll speak to a couple of those.

Certainly on our housing, housing is one of our major -- you know, one of our main priorities in this House. I know how passionate and certainly how hard working the Minister of housing is, and I know I'm going to see that transferred to her department as well. But what I will say is please spend the money, spend the money. We have units that need to be built. We have units that need to be repaired. We have people sitting and waiting for these units that have been promised these units, Mr. Speaker, and they're still waiting to get in them. So let's ensure to do whatever we have to do to get that money spent.

On addictions, Mr. Speaker, you've heard a lot of us speak on addictions here and what it's doing to our territory, what's happening in our communities with the drug trade, with the hard drugs that are in our communities. And, Mr. Speaker, I think that's going to take not only an investment in programs or an investment in infrastructure there when the time comes, we need places for people to go so when they come back into this territory after getting the significant treatment they need that they have a place to continue that treatment and not fall back into those situations that got them there in the first place, Mr. Speaker. So, again, and I know it's not only important to me, it's important to everybody on both sides of this House.

I'm happy, Mr. Speaker, with education and early learning and child care. I know, again, the Minister's very passionate on that issue, and I'm happy to see that we do have some additional funding in there to ensure that we're paying the people that look after the people that allow us to go to work every day and to make sure that we're able to attract professional people to work in our early learning centres and to give them the compensation that they deserve, they require, and to continue to do what they do. So that certainly makes me very happy. And I know speaking from members in my riding and the Children's First Society in my riding, it will be very welcomed news.

Economic growth, Mr. Speaker, you've heard me say in this House before, and I'll continue to speak about it, about, you know, thinking outside the box, I'm going to continue to advocate for our natural resources, I'm going to continue to advocate for natural gas in my region, and I'll continue to advocate for working with our Indigenous governments who are, again, leading the way on a lot of these -- certainly in my riding, leading the way on this initiative there. And I trust that we will continue to work with them and ensure that we are taking advantage of that as well.

It was spoken about passionately here today, with the Member certainly from the Sahtu -- he knows my opinion on this issue -- the Mackenzie Valley Highway is a must, Mr. Speaker. In my riding or in the Beaufort Delta, our trade route is through the Yukon. There's no doubt millions of dollars pour in through Yukon to Edmonton to Whitehorse. That is our trade route, Mr. Speaker, because that is our route to get there, and we need that highway. And I hear it regularly throughout my riding, our constituents, get that highway built. So I'm glad to hear the inspiring words that our Minister said today, as well as my colleagues, that, you know, we are going to get there, and we'll continue to push for that.

There's many other issues, Mr. Speaker, I could speak to. I got to tell you I'm a little low on gas, pardon the pun, after these last couple of weeks but I would like to say a huge thank you, obviously, to my colleagues, to our deputy chair of AOC, our Member from Deh Cho, and the work that AOC has done on this, to our amazing staff that have guided us through this work and stuck with us through thick and thin and, of course, to our Cabinet colleagues and specifically the Minister of Finance who's been nothing but professional and forthcoming and the Premier for stepping in when he had to and kicking some things across the goal line, which I certainly appreciated. And also the Minister of health, I know we had a little back and forth. But all of Cabinet, seriously, it's been a process. It's never easy. But I think we finally got there, something that I think we can be proud of. And I'll have some suggestions for the Minister of Finance on how we can maybe do this process a little differently next year, but we can talk about that at a later date. But, again, thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.