Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, I think this is actually a fairly important series of accounts to look at or numbers to look at in the main estimates. This is money that is paid on debt. So this is the money that we pay to the banks. This has no asset in the Northwest Territories, no program or service that is being serviced. It's just money that we're paying on the debt.

And well, yes, I am happy that there has been a small reduction in interest rates that had not -- you know, in the last couple of years, we had to come back when rates were not dropping as quickly as what was at times being projected, in addition to the fact that then when you wind up taking on additional short-term debt, particularly, for example, over this summer when we wound up in a situation of having to burn through what money we had for relief and recovery and emergencies, you then wind up taking on more short-term debt. That comes at a higher interest rate. So between needing to take on more and the costs of debt being higher, we wound up requiring more.

As far as projections for 2024-2025, again, you know, everyone can read the financial news and there's been ideas that the interest rate would come down, and so the folks are doing their best estimate of what interest rates will be over the next fiscal year and what the impact of that will be over the next fiscal year and then building that into the main estimates here. Thank you, Madam Chair.