Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, it's rare that we speak to routine business of supply such as supplementary estimates but in this case, I feel compelled to raise a protest to our continued pattern of -- or our continued pattern of expenditures well exceeding our revenues despite things like the fiscal strategy put in place to control them. We continue to fail to meet our targets. The messaging is very mixed in public and in this House as to whether or not we have a very solid foundation for our finances or one that's incredibly shaky, and I think that confusion resonates outside of this institution as well.

So I said when we debated these in the Committee of the Whole that I wasn't going to write any blank cheques to the government on this one, and I intend to keep my word on that one. We went through the detail of that document and many -- you know, probed the questions that needed to be -- answer the questions that needed to be -- or asked the questions that needed to be asked and ultimately reviewed that spending but, at the same time, as substantiated as it is, it still represents significant overruns from where the main estimates put the government's proposed spending, especially around health care. And now we have new information on hand where appropriations for health care are being approved before we actually see the budget, and perhaps that's why we see these overruns.

We have a lot of work to do in this Assembly to get our fiscal house in order. I've listened, I've heard clearly from our finance Minister that that needs to be a goal that's priority. If fact, I urged this government to make it a priority of the 20th Assembly. And that unfortunately was not the case. So we were spending an inordinate amount of time talking about this and -- because it is a -- or it is -- there's a great need, but it not being a political priority makes it much more difficult to address because it has to take a backseat to everything else we do and this is what I mean about the confusion. You know, we need -- we have four priorities and fiscal restraint is not one of them, and it should be, because it is increasingly becoming a subject of -- or topic of subject and debate in this House.

So all that being said, I do not feel like I can support this budget at this time until we have clarity on our fiscal priorities and a real plan to get our finances in order. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.