Thank you.

Supplementary Estimates (Operations Expenditures), No. 2, 2024-2025, Department of Health and Social Services, operations expenditures, total department not previously authorized, $19,901,000. Does committee agree?

Thank you. Please turn to page 10 for the Department of Industry, Tourism and Investment.

Supplementary Estimates (Operations Expenditures), No. 2, 2024-2025, Department of Industry, Tourism and Investment, operations expenditures, corporate management, not previously authorized, $45,000. Are there any questions? Seeing no further questions.

Supplementary Estimates (Operations Expenditures), No. 2, 2024-2025, Department of Industry, Tourism and Investment, operations expenditures, corporate management, not previously authorized, $45,000. Does committee agree?

Thank you.

Supplementary Estimates (Operations Expenditures), No. 2, 2024-2025, Department of Industry, Tourism and Investment, operations expenditures, economic diversification and business support, not previously authorized, $145,000. Are there any questions? Seeing no further questions.

Supplementary Estimates (Operations Expenditures), No. 2, 2024-2025, Department of Industry, Tourism and Investment, operations expenditures, economic diversification and business support, not previously authorized, $145,000. Does committee agree?

Thank you.

Supplementary Estimates (Operations Expenditures), No. 2, 2024-2025, Department of Industry, Tourism and Investment, operations expenditures, minerals and petroleum resources, not previously authorized, $818,000. Are there any questions? I'm going to go to the Member from Great Slave.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have no issue with this; I just want to know more and understand more. I see it's fully offset by the Government of Canada. Can the Minister, please, explain what the high resolution airborne geophysical survey for critical minerals is. Thank you.

Thank you. I'm going to go to the Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. This is $600,000, and it is being fully offset from revenues from CanNor, and what they are doing with this is a geophysical survey that will help enhance some of the quality of our existing geological, geophysical data, and with that, in turn, when you increase the available knowledge and information, it helps anyone that's looking around at what is in the ground to identify where there is likely to be critical mineral or other mineral deposits based on this data, and then they can go on and use that as a beginning point to hopefully come and do their own exploration. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. I'm going to go to the Member from Great Slave.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Hoorah, keep going. Thank you.

Thank you. Any other Members that want to make comments, general questions? Seeing no further questions.

Supplementary Estimates (Operations Expenditures), No. 2, 2024-2025, Department of Industry, Tourism and Investment, operations expenditures, minerals and petroleum resources, not previously authorized, $818,000. Does the committee agree?

Thank you. Supplementary Estimates (Operations Expenditures), No. 2, 2024-2025, Department of Industry, Tourism and Investment, operations expenditures, total department not previously authorized, $1,008,000. Does the committee agree?

Thank you. Please turn to page 13 for the Department of Infrastructure.

Supplementary Estimates (Operations Expenditures), No. 2, 2024-2025, Department of Infrastructure, operations expenditures, energy and strategic initiatives, not previously authorized, $76,000. Are there any questions? Seeing no further questions.

Supplementary Estimates (Operations Expenditures), No. 2, 2024-2025, Department of Infrastructure, operations expenditures, energy and strategic initiatives, not previously authorized, $76,000. Does the committee agree?

Thank you.

Supplementary Estimates (Operations Expenditures), No. 2, 2024-2025, Department of Infrastructure, operations expenditures, programs and services, not previously authorized, $18,340,000. Are there any questions? Seeing no further questions.

Supplementary Estimates (Operations Expenditures), No. 2, 2024-2025, Department of Infrastructure, programs and services, not previously authorized, $18,340,000. Does the committee agree?

Thank you.

Supplementary Estimates (Operations Expenditures), No. 2, 2024-2025, Department of Infrastructure, operations expenditures, regional operations, not previously authorized, $14,720,000. Are there any questions? I'm going to go to the Member from Frame Lake.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yeah, I'll just ask these one at a time.

The first one I have a question about is the additional lease funding to address the shortfall in the general purpose office space budget. Just wondering why there was a shortfall there; it seems like something that's relatively predictable and stable. If they could give me some substantiation for that one, please. Thank you.

Thank you. I'll go to the Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, there's a couple of factors that can be -- that can result in the increase. First is there is -- well, primarily is that there was -- there was and continues to be a plan to reduce the overall lease footprint and to get to a place where we have less footprint and therefore less costs, and that was being built in. Unfortunately, some of that work is taking a little longer to get to, and as a result so while they have reduced the budget for leases, they ultimately found that there was base rent, then base rent escalations by landlords and also operations and maintenance costs with that. So between those two things, the numbers didn't go down. They, in fact, went up. But we are still committed in the longer term, Mr. Chair, to doing a review and to reducing the footprint. Thank you.