Absolutely committed to working with day home operators.

Thank you, Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. Final supplementary. Member from Range Lake.

Thank you. We're making good progress. Mr. Speaker, so finally, just on the training side, the training required for day home operators, the 55 hours, it's on a screen, it's a virtual program. That's hard for some people with different needs. There's no English -- or non-English language support or ESL supports in place. Can the Minister commit to working with those operators who have those disadvantage -- or those different abilities and work with them to find a better way to do this so they're not at a disadvantage in completing this course work? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, ECE is certainly open to providing any additional supports that people need. This would be done on a case-by-case basis. ECE's not received any type of request at this point, and if people have a situation where they need additional supports I encourage them to reach out by emailing [email protected].

Thank you, Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. Oral questions. Member from Yellowknife North.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions now are for the Minister of MACA, Municipal and Community Affairs -- don't want to leave him out. One of the main initiatives identified by this government in business plans is civic addressing. And I understand that work is underway to assign civic addresses in small communities that don't have them, but my question is what is the plan to provide standardized addresses for the more than 400 residents living in unincorporated areas throughout the NWT, like along highways, including all of the residents living out on the Ingraham Trail east of Yellowknife? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Member for Yellowknife North. Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Honoured to be here. I just wanted to say so with the incorporated areas that we have within the territories, of course it's hard to apply civic addresses. We are working with communities to do civic addresses; however, with the unincorporated areas there are some struggles, and there's some discussions happening amongst agencies. I know some of the addressing that's being used right now currently is kilometer markings on the highway system, and that's pretty common throughout the Northwest Territories. So currently, we don't have anything set for the area that the Member's speaking of, but there is discussion that is going on in the background to try to figure something out that would be something that could be used amongst all the agencies that are requiring them, like emergency services or the actual location themselves like those on the Ingraham Trail. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And I appreciate the Minister acknowledging that this is needed for things like emergency services. Even, you know, deliveries of things like fuel, it becomes a huge problem when you can't specify where they're supposed to go. So I wasn't clear from that answer, is there a commitment from this government to address civic addressing for unincorporated residences? It sounds like there's discussions, but is there a commitment to figure it out by the end of this Assembly. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So we all know how we don't like commitments but I will work with the Member to see how we can -- to pursue with this. And I think it's -- it is an important issue, especially when you're dealing with emergency services. So I know there is conversations happening in the background; however, I don't know exactly where those are at. But I am willing to work with the Member and see what we can do for areas like those on the Ingraham Trail. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs. Final supplementary. Member from Yellowknife North.

Okay, thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate that, and I would flag too that there have been attempts in the past to put standardized addressing in place on the Ingraham Trail but there's been different systems that are now obsolete; it's almost worse than not having anything at all. So I appreciate that the Minister is committing to work on it. And I guess what I'm asking for is if the Minister could commit to join me meeting with constituents on the Ingraham Trail, this summer perhaps, to look at past systems and what their recommendations are for future systems that could work. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

That is a very easy commitment for me, and I will say yes. But I would also add that there is some issues with just throwing out civic addressing. We do have other agencies we have to work with. And I know there's potentially some solutions out there so it's something we could probably, you know, have worked on pretty soon. So thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs. Oral questions. Member from Yellowknife Centre.

Thank you, Member from Yellowknife Centre. Minister of Finance.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. With respect to the Assembly, the Assembly, of course, is managed by the board of management so I'll leave that to the operations of the board of management. With respect, more broadly, to the GNWT, Mr. Speaker, we certainly are -- of course that's why we introduced Restoring Balance as being an overarching strategy, fiscal strategy, for the government that would look for ways to reduce all expenditures and increase revenues.

Mr. Speaker, we did -- with respect to coming into the end of this fiscal year, we did ask the departments to consider carefully what kind of cash management and cash situation they have.

There is, of course, a difference, Mr. Speaker, between the total debt limit that we might be -- that we have and actually going near that on any given day. So perhaps I'll leave it there, Mr. Speaker. There's two more questions. I'll see what comes next. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, these strategies have yielded probably something, and I'll let the Minister explain what they have, but there's an enforcement perspective that doesn't seem to be there, including consequences. Mr. Speaker, how are we meeting these financial objectives without going over the wall, as they say, or hitting the financial wall? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So we certainly have achieved some important markers. We are around $106 million ahead of where we were at the start of this Assembly in terms of the revenues that we have either increased or expenditures that we've been able to find and reduce, and that is all the while, Mr. Speaker, remaining alive to the fact that this continues to be a challenging time for residents, that there have been a number of unexpected needs. Again, low water is one that's well known, but also a wildfire season that still had a pretty significant cost associated to this last year, with one community evacuated and I believe others under monitoring. So notwithstanding those emergencies, we've achieved over $100 million and change in terms of where we're at in our budgets. And, Mr. Speaker, we are still projecting to be able to pay for, I think, the first time, if I'm mistaken, certainly since the 1999, the first time that we were paying for our full capital budget, projecting to do so this last year, projecting to do so into 2025-2026. So those are some pretty important achievements that we've had.

Mr. Speaker, departments do have variance monitoring that they each engage with that then goes to the Department of Finance and ultimately is coming to the financial management board so that we have a sense of where money is going at any given time. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister of Finance. Final supplementary. Member from Yellowknife Centre.

Mr. Speaker, the -- you know, kudos to the paying for the full capital budget but keep in mind that, Mr. Speaker, that only works when you don't have the ability to borrow money anymore. So in other words, you can only spend the money you have. So the finance Minister's made it clear we have no more room on our borrowing.

So, Mr. Speaker, I guess I'm really getting at, at the end of the day here, my question is what is the Minister doing from a public discussion point of view about tabling ideas, how we can rework governments better and find more efficient ways to attract both a better financial bottom line and a better sound bottom line so we don't hit the wall, financial wall, that people are concerned about because this is a major stressor among the Northerners. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Again, Mr. Speaker, we did at the initial stage of having the Restoring Balance framework go out, and, again, it was the first time ever that a fiscal strategy for an Assembly was actually made public and was made the subject of a fairly public announcement, because we wanted to get feedback, wanted to get feedback particularly from public servants who are well placed often to know where efficiencies lie. We received an enormous amount of feedback, and we have continued to receive some feedback over the course of the last year. But, again, certainly always encourage people to bring ideas forward through our departments and to their MLAs. Members of the public, too, were submitting ideas through that process. Mr. Speaker, I've -- we still have the red tape reduction working group that has a live email address and I often hear people say it's a great idea, but I'm not getting as many submissions there as I would like to see, although I think one may have just come in this morning.

So, Mr. Speaker, these are all avenues by which folks can submit their ideas and put ideas forward.

As I think I -- I had a fair bit of time yesterday, and I know I'm getting long, Mr. Speaker, we're -- I'm not -- we are -- we did increase or we sought to increase the borrowing limit from the federal government to increase that flexibility but, Mr. Speaker, we are still in a position where we -- we're not expecting to hit it this fiscal year. We are looking forward to the next fiscal year in terms of what we are -- we want to make sure we have some room, and we want to have that room because we want to achieve the priorities of this Assembly which are ones that look towards our future. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Colleagues, our time for oral questions is up. Oral questions. Written questions. Returns to written questions. Relies to the Commissioner's address. Petitions. Tabling of documents. Minister of Finance.

Thank you. Mr. Speaker, I wish to table the following document: 2023-2024 Public Accounts, Sections 1, 2, 3, and 4. Thank you, Mr. Speaker