Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, there are many encouraging things in this budget that will help to set us on a better path as a government and as a territory, both things that were initially proposed by Cabinet and both budget changes and policy changes that the government has agreed to through negotiations with Regular Members. I want to give just a quick rundown of the highlights for me and flag a few key items that are left outstanding that I think need to be urgently addressed as we move forward with this work.

So I'm encouraged to see the transitional housing for addictions recovery program which has been called for a very long time to address the big gap in aftercare, people returning from addictions, and to see the recent commitment to even expand that within the life of this government. I'm encouraged to see that we are continuing to support the transformation of Aurora College to a polytechnic. I'm encouraged to see more money to support better compensation of early learning and child care workers and additional funds put into repair and maintenance of public housing. I'm also encouraged to see the government has committed, in its response to committee, that it will include in its strategic energy plan a goal of reaching net-zero emissions for both nonindustrial and industrial emitters by 2050. I'm pleased that the government has agreed to examine and estimate the cost to introduce an Office of Practitioner Experience in the health care system that would help frontline health care providers get their concerns addressed in more effective ways. We need to change the way we're doing things in the health care system, particularly in terms of staff retention.

Another recommendation that was made by committee in the health care topic was a health care workforce plan. It was derived from a suggestion made by the NWT Medical Association. The government's response, however, was unclear and simply referred us to the HSS human resources plan, which I want to be clear does not accomplish the same thing as a systemic workforce plan. So I will continue to advocate for such a workforce plan so that we can be proactive in deciding, first, what level of health care services are realistic and worth striving for, to plan and budget for appropriate numbers of professionals and appropriate types of health care professionals to be able to actually accomplish that and do it well without constantly straining and burning out our staff capacity.

I continue to be concerned about the elimination of the Office of the Children's Lawyer position. I'm aware that a letter has been sent to the Minister just this week by the Legal Aid Commission, which is the oversight body for legal aid, and it says, I quote: We believe that the role of the Office of the Children's Lawyer is misunderstood by the Minister and the Cabinet.

Now, the commission recommends restoring the full operating budget of the Office of the Children's Lawyer, and legislation requires that the Minister seriously consider any such recommendations of the commission. So I trust that will take place, and I look forward to that discussion continuing.

I also continue to be concerned about the reductions to Arctic Energy Alliance, reductions both to operating funding and grant programs to communities. We have major energy challenges in this territory, Mr. Speaker, and Arctic Energy Alliance has been doing crucial work in partnership with community governments to equip our homes and our communities with cleaner, more energy efficient technologies. This work is often incremental, small, but steady; it's behind the scenes, but it's incredibly important. And I hope the Minister establishes a closer working relationship with Arctic Energy Alliance moving forward to be able to support that important work.

We have much work ahead of us. I hope we can all keep our focus on the bigger picture and the collaboration that we need to make our consensus government work in order to achieve our common priorities. So I thank everyone for the hard work we've put in, but there's much more work ahead. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.