Mr. Speaker, when people have asked me what do I think about this year's operating budget, I've been describing it as a status quo budget. The government describes it as providing stability. It reminds of a lesson I've learned while paddling some of the beautiful rivers of the Northwest Territories, especially whitewater rivers. So when you're in turbulent waters and the boat feels like it's about to tip, your instinct is to grab the gunnels of the boat and to try to stabilize yourself. But the problem is that that doesn't work and sometimes it makes you even more unstable. You can't control the waves underneath by holding onto the boat, and you have to let go of our paddle to grab onto the boat. So you lose control of where you're going.

Anyone who's ever taught white water paddling will tell you over and over again, whatever you do, don't grab the gunnels, keep your paddle in the water. And yet almost everyone grabs the gunnels, and I've grabbed the gunnels more times than I care to admit. Because it's just our instinct. When things get turbulent, we reach for stability, the status quo. We hold on tight to what we already have, and we resist change. But what I hope that we can do as an Assembly is to keep our paddle in the water no matter what, to keep focused on where we need to go. That is the only way towards real stability and safety.

Most of the spending items that the government has highlighted in this budget as evidence of achieving this Assembly's priorities so far are really just signs of us barely treading water, or to use my previous analogy, barely keeping the boat afloat.

For example, we're highlighting that we've spent -- or we're spending $12 million to dispute to ratepayers to mitigate impacts of the general electricity rate increase. But that's not a sign of a robust economic foundation. That's a sign our power system is in major trouble.

We've got hemorrhaging health care costs. We're showing that we're spending an additional $64 million on health care. But that's mostly a sign of a population that is sicker and failing to get the preventative care and the primary care earlier on to prevent more serious illnesses. So that's not a sign of success. We're spending more, but we're not necessarily getting better results.

So we can't be both pointing to those things as the source of our fiscal crisis but then turning around and bragging about spending money on those things like electricity bailouts and health care costs to demonstrate that we're working on our priorities. You can't have it both ways, Mr. Speaker.

I do want to acknowledge that this government has taken a few major steps in positive directions. The health care system sustainability unit represents a significant investment in trying to make our health care system work better. The establishment of a new unit within executive and Indigenous affairs to create a strategic approach to homelessness, including the creation of new transitional housing units, represents a notable commitment to help our most vulnerable community members. But by and large, what's been missing in this era of fiscal sustainability is a positive vision of what we're building, where we're going, what difference we want to make in people's lives. The message coming through is that we need to tighten our belts, do more with less, just hold on with our fingernails.

Now, we don't always need to be on this march towards progress and change, getting better and better and better year after year, but we do need to show that we're making positive impacts. We need to nurture the seeds of where there's positive energy, grow the momentum where there's initiatives that are working on a local level, things that are motivating people. And what I keep hearing from my colleagues here is that people in NWT communities need to feel more sense of ownership over their lives, less helplessness and dependency. And so we need to seriously rethink how we deliver housing and income security and education.

For a long time, we've thought of government money as coming from this bottomless well. So if it gets wasted or spent on silly things, people often joke and say, whatever, it's just government money. But we're realizing now that the well is not bottomless and that attitude can't be sustained. So what if we used public resources and spent government money as if it was our own money, our own family's money, not as if it's government money.

When it's our own money, we want to see results. It's not enough just to show that money was spread across various communities and processes were followed, and boxes were checked. When it's our own money for our family, we need to make sure that money gets us meat on the table at the end of the day, wood in the stove, that our home is fixed up nice and sturdy and cozy, and that there are trained health care practitioners and emergency responders to keep us healthy and safe, that our children are well cared for and learning everything they need to know to ensure our communities continue on over the long term. When it's our money, we spend it on the things that really matter at the end of the day.

The common theme here seems to be accountability, that we all need to take more care with the precious resources that we have, to make wiser choices, and that people in each community need to take more ownership over what's happening there. Residents need to feel a sense of ownership over their own homes, and that's not all on the GNWT, obviously. But we can start with what we do have control over, such as helping more residents in public housing take ownership over their units.

To circle back to where I began, Mr. Speaker, as we sit in this boat together on turbulent waters, as the waves start to crash over the sides, we have to remember we're not going to steady the boat by holding on tight to the status quo. We have to keep our paddles in the water, keep moving towards where we need to go, even if it's slow, even if we're fighting against wind and currents, and most of all, we have to all paddle in the same direction. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.