Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, it's been a long day. I've got a lot of papers in front of me, but I'm going to try and get this on the rails.

Let me start by saying, Mr. Speaker, I do believe that this budget process is a negotiation. It is a difficult one. It's a difficult one for everyone. Not everybody on Cabinet gets what they want at the Cabinet table. But we do have to come together. We have discussions about what the issues are, what our priorities are, what our constituents need, what our residents need, from all different sized communities here, from small communities to the capital to regional centres. And it's not an easy conversation. But, Mr. Speaker, we always -- we always do come together and, Mr. Speaker, then we come to this process.

I will say, Mr. Speaker, one of the things -- and I want to speak a little bit to the process. It's not well understood. As I've attended FPT tables, federal provincial, territorial meeting tables elsewhere, I've realized how different we are from the way things operate in a provincial jurisdiction.

Firstly, Mr. Speaker, I don't make the budget. The Department of Finance doesn't make the budget. That often is how it happens elsewhere. Instead the seven of us collaboratively make the budget. Everyone is responsible for bringing forward submissions from their department, we have to go around the table at the financial management board, and then it comes forward to the Assembly, first to committees in the confidential in-camera review process that we begin back -- way back in January. And through that process, MLAs have an opportunity to ask each Minister detailed questions, sometimes informing themselves about where they may want to ask questions later in public, and sometimes informing themselves to better understand a direction, and very often also pushing a Minister in a department on an issue they see in there that they want to see some change. Sometimes that ultimately comes forward through the negotiation process and sometimes it ultimately can be a discussion between that Member and that Minister that can be part of what goes on through on -- throughout the process of consensus government. People can begin to work together on issues as the Member from Yellowknife North and the Member from Inuvik Boot Lake now work together on a number of issues in the healthcare front. But then, Mr. Speaker, once we do come to a point where there is some sense of where we're coming into the Legislative Assembly and conducting the public review of each department, of each division, of each area, the questions, again, get asked and, again, that's an opportunity where government is being pushed and saying, look, this is what the political actors elected to lead are asking and expecting of you. So, again, departments go and will shift the work that's happening within the departments. And so, Mr. Speaker, I do want to give a bit of a shout-out.

We do have a 2.6 -- a little over $2.6 billion in total revenues, and our expenditures $2.3 billion as well, $472 million of that is the public service. Those are the folks that do all the things, every single thing that we're talking about here, that's them. That's what that pays for. It pays for them to do all of those things and provide those services.

Another $1.2 billion goes out the door. It's the grants and contributions and transfers to we give to municipalities and small communities and large communities, NGOs. It goes out the door to all of them. And, again, helps us deliver all the programs and services we're describing here. And we do -- when we come to a point of trying to figure out what we -- what we need to do, from the Cabinet perspective we know walking in here it's going to be a discussion with Members from the other side in order to pass the budget. And there has certainly been evolution over the course of assemblies about how that gets done. And, Mr. Speaker, I'd say I'm proud to say that in this Assembly, we've continued that evolution leading to today where the focus is on changes that are reflective of the priorities of the Assembly, and they are focused on changes that not only prioritize the Assembly but also that prioritize the whole of the Assembly. So rather than being, you know, a one-off item where a particular choice for one community or one type of program or service that maybe services one group, it really is an effort, I would say, as a collective to try to benefit the whole of the territory and all of our priorities, Mr. Speaker. It's on a high level, and that's something that I think we should be all proud of, that we can all look at one another and try to find those kinds of issues where we can make big changes.

We also, Mr. Speaker, in this government have shifted to having our business plans as part of our main estimates, but what that's meant is that it opens up this negotiation. It's no longer just about line items, Mr. Speaker. We're now opening up the entirety of the business process of what we do as a government, what all of the public servants do, and opening it up to this discussion of change. And, Mr. Speaker, it's -- it is a complicated one. There's a -- I have a 14-page spreadsheet of all the different things we've been discussing over the last while, areas where we might go back and forth and might find some room to change. I want to highlight just a few, but, Mr. Speaker, it doesn't -- it's just a few; it's not everything and I won't go through the whole thing owing in part to the time.

But this process of beginning in January, one on ones between Ministers and MLAs with particular issues or needs, going through the in-camera review by department, going through negotiations, it pushes the public service, who want to deliver good programs and services, and it pushes them to do that through this process. It's everything that's part of the consensus process. This is the highlight. This is what people pay attention to. But it's been three months of getting here. And even before that, it's been the relationships before that where we knew and we expected what was coming, particularly on an ask from housing, but on other areas too.

So with that, Mr. Speaker, there's been discussions around income assistance. And I know that's been mentioned again tonight. So I do want to acknowledge that. It's a known now need, there's going to be need to be some consideration of how we can re-examine and look at a success or lack of success of income assistance. It's not working the same for everyone and for every community, and that is a recognition. But that's been a significant conversation as a result of budget negotiations. I don't have the outcome today because it's complicated, and it's not easy, but the point is that it -- by being part of this process, the government is now being pushed to go and look at it because it's been brought forward. It's been discussed, and we know that there has to be action taken.

Mr. Speaker, I want to also acknowledge there's some small things, even just, for example, I think I -- I don't necessarily know which Member brings forward particular issues. Sometimes I guess. But, Mr. Speaker, there's been questions around the NWT child tax benefit, can we improve this, can we make this better for residents. Well, Mr. Speaker, I need to do some math on this one. I need to run that one a bit more. But we've committed to go and say, yes, we're going to look at this. So even ideas like that, it doesn't have to come through the budget process, but it also can. And that's, I think, what makes consensus different is that it, again, highlighted on today, but it is an ongoing dialogue and relationship that we have when we can discuss areas and concerns and ideas in a way that might not be happening when we're constrained in a different system.

I'm going to skip over my housing line for the moment, Mr. Speaker, because we're going to come back to that one in a bit. But there's been a commitment, again, ECE and housing recognizing that they have an opportunity to find a way to increase apprentices. There's been a real recognition that this is an area of some success, but it's also an area where we just need to keep those successes growing and that momentum going. So acknowledging that.

Discussion around defence and sovereignty strategy and acknowledging that we'll have something ready for the next sitting. You know, again, that's -- saying that there's going to be a strategy ready in this area by the May sitting, that's a commitment that maybe I didn't need to detail here, but it's been already made to my colleagues, Mr. Speaker. They know it's coming, and they're going to hold us to it because they're pushing us on this as an area that we know is important.

So other items around discussing what's coming next in GRI which I know is important to some and how we're going to move forward with program evaluation. Even the hundred thousand dollars for family violence shelters being reinstated, reinstated, but also, Mr. Speaker, moving from health and social services, which makes it a bit more of a one-off, putting it other in EIA now, so reflecting again a push towards what can we try to do to make these systems, to make the funding to be more unified, more organized, and have them make more sense so NGOs know that funding mechanisms will sit in that, in a relatively more -- housed in EIA and over time move away from being department by department. It's much more difficult obviously for an NGO with limited capacity to have to figure out and navigate. So we're making that commitment to get that work done.

A lot of discussion obviously around the health and social services sector. And, Mr. Speaker, there's a lot of work happening and a lot of conversations being had with how to make that system run more efficiently and effectively, not to -- in order to make sure that we're using those public dollars. It's almost a third of what we spend is on health. That is a major priority of this government. We want to be spending those dollars as best we can to service residents and to service them in a way that provides good health care and supports to the people that are providing that health care.

Mr. Speaker, it is sort of a last but not least, housing. I do want to speak to the housing item. It was a part of the discussions we had back in the fall when we passed the capital budget. And at that time, the commitment was to figure out a plan on what we then called a notional plan, and there was much -- much time spent on the word notional back then. A notional plan is just that. It's the idea of presenting a plan with dollar figures associated but not necessarily knowing where those dollar figures might come from. Over the years, Housing NWT does on average had managed to find some funding. Typically it's from some federal entity or agency or the CMHC or otherwise. But, Mr. Speaker, coming in here, this session, there was no new funding coming, there were no new announcements coming, but we certainly knew that there would be pressure from our colleagues. So that notional plan was put into an incremental plan which followers of the House might recall hearing the Minister of housing have to say that she was describing the budget sitting as a witness incremental meant that there was options starting at $5 million and gradually moving up of what we could do with different types of funding.

Well, Mr. Speaker, the full plan, the full $50 million, so a base amount that was already coming from the GNWT, plus the new amount included to bring it to $50 million is where we landed. So it is a significant investment, Mr. Speaker. I would suggest it was -- it's now funding the full plan. So it is no longer notional, nor incremental. It is now the full plan.

And, Mr. Speaker, I do -- I want to give full credit to our colleagues on the other side for this because it wasn't necessarily where we thought this would land, but it was very clear that it's where they wanted this to land. And I have a bit more sort of news, if I might, on that, and it's that, Mr. Speaker, although we shared with our colleagues what that first year might look like in terms of looking at modernization and improvements which is the major renovations that keeps a House from becoming a boarded up derelict unit, there's about 175 that can be funded through this and another 47 that can be replaced on top of that. It takes a huge dent over these three years into the $200 million housing infrastructure deficit that we estimate exists, Mr. Speaker. And that's a significant change in that space to make sure that houses aren't being boarded up, aren't looking derelict, aren't bringing down communities, and they're actually going to be in and available for people to live in and to use and to move away from waitlists.

The other thing I want to give credit to my colleagues on is they've accepted, Mr. Speaker, every Member who is representing a community was shown the lists of waitlists, the lists of -- the age of the housing units and are accepting that this is now a data-driven plan. So, again, acknowledging and I appreciate that, you know, that is putting us into a place where we are as a group making evidence-based decisions and making evidence-based choices. And I do acknowledge that's hard because it doesn't always align with sometimes what we feel when we look around in a community that you're in all the time, but you can come here and say we have an evidence-based approach.

And one other good piece of news I'll give, and, again, it's credit to our colleagues, by making this a three-year commitment, we now have more economies of scale that we can use to deliver this plan, and that means that these numbers, 175 this year and 47 this year for replacements, may go up because we are now able to order more, use a more economy of scale approach, and plan to have mobilization costs community by community managed differently or better. Now, of course, it's time of tariffs, so it's difficult to predict anything these days, Mr. Speaker, but one thing we can say is that over 90 percent of housing's contracts are delivered locally. They're delivered by northern businesses, northern residents, northern people. And, Mr. Speaker, so while I don't -- I don't know what's happening with the tariffs, and I can't necessarily predict what's happening south of the border. But I can say that this is an investment that we believe can be delivered by Northerners for Northerners. So, again, it's credit to our colleagues for pushing us for the three years because it's created that opportunity.

Mr. Speaker, I want to -- I'm running longer than I expected. But Mr. Speaker, I want to quickly mention the CLCs, the community learning centres. Again, it's been a subject of much conversation. And I do want the public to know that our colleagues have been dogged on this, both on the floor but also with myself, with the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, right up to the very end on this one. I appreciate the grace that they're giving us on this one. And what I mean by that is we do need a bit of time. Obviously, Aurora College is an independent entity. It does operate at arm's length. We may not always be happy about the decisions it's making, but it is structured to make those decisions on its own. The GNWT does have a responsibility to deliver education, and the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment and supported by our colleagues is committing that we're going to go back and look and acknowledge that there's not one size fits all here, but that she will, over the next just couple of months, go back to the communities that have operating CLCs, go back to those that have operating programs, and figure out who wants to see what happened next. We've already had outreach from some communities saying they the facility. That will then look over to Department of Infrastructure to see what we can do to move those processes along. But others that want to see the programs continue, that may be funded from third party sources. So we're going to figure that out. We're going to provide a critical path and the timeline, and we're going to do that by the May sitting, Mr. Speaker, which is a pretty quick turnaround, but it is an important item and we're happy to make that commitment.

So with all that, Mr. Speaker, of course, there's always more that people will want; that is the nature of government. The needs of the territory and the needs of the residents don't stop, needs of our communities don't stop, but this is probably the single biggest budgetary change that I'm certainly aware of ever being made, but we're proud of it; it's one that does reflect the priorities of the Assembly, and I thank my colleagues for getting us here. Thank you