Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I chose to take a bit of a different approach to negotiating the budget this year. I've spoken a lot to the need for increased funding going towards housing in this territory, and we discussed that a fair bit during the vote on the capital budget, which I voted against because I didn't feel that we had gone far enough, and as I said at the time, my issue was with the word "notional." If we had removed the word "notional", they would have had my support. Well, the result of our negotiations at this budget where notional has been removed from the plan to fund housing in the Northwest Territories by $150 million over the next three years.

Mr. Speaker, there are many issues in this territory that still matter to me. Many issues that I think we need to resolve. I'll speak to a few of them in a few minutes here. But I wanted to ensure that we focused on this first and foremost because it was my top priority, and by focusing on it and by really driving the point home to our colleagues that this is the top issue, this is the issue for me that I will defeat budget after budget over until we get movement on it, by putting that laser focus, as was said by one of the Ministers said, I will say that the focus worked. Bwe have obtained a commitment from Cabinet to put a significant amount of money towards housing that we hadn't obtained previously. I see this as an achievement.

Mr. Speaker, a while back when we were negotiating the capital budget, it was identified by housing staff that year over year, the housing department is losing -- well, not losing, but there is an infrastructure deficit building in the territory and in order to address that deficit, we would need a minimum of $50 million a year to address it, to not be losing homes and losing ground on any progress that we're making on new builds. We are putting new builds out there. There was new builds happening before we negotiated this amount, but all of those new builds would just be negated by the fact that we're losing more. And so based on this evidence that we got from the housing department, Members started to put forward the idea, well, let's not fall behind; let's address this. Let's put the $50 million out there and let's make sure that we are not losing housing stock. That was very important to me. I really see it as a minimum that we had to achieve. But it's worth noting that we were not there. We were not putting that $50 million into maintenance and improvement year over year in order to not fall behind. So that became a very important thing for me to advocate for, and I'm very glad to see that it's happening today.

Is it perfect, Mr. Speaker? No, it's not. Perfection is a difficult thing to strive for in governance. I dare might say it's impossible, but I do like to strive. But, you know, it's not perfect. I am somewhat concerned that we are -- currently the plan is to finance this money with some debt.

I spoke at length during my reply to the budget address that we need to focus on our priorities, and in implementing our priorities, we need to figure out what we can let go out in order to implement the priorities. And so we haven't fully done that, but I have some more things to say about that.

It's been suggested that we could do more. I don't disagree. But to do that -- we need to be very clear. In order to do that, we either need to take on a significant amount of debt or we're going to need bigger, more substantial, and more painful cuts. That's something I haven't seen a lot of enthusiasm for or specific ideas. And certainly I think there's definitely some areas that we could look at, and I continue to encourage and push Cabinet to make tough decisions, to squeeze every dollar, to look at our priorities and particularly look at the areas that aren't priorities and how we can move money from those areas into the priority areas that we have because there are other priorities now that we've got money in housing that I want to turn to.

But, Mr. Speaker, I've been reflecting a lot on politics lately as I would imagine a lot of Canadians have been doing, as increased chaos takes place below our border and is now crossing the border in the form of tariffs and threats. And something that's really stood out to me is just how valuable stability can be in governance, just how value -- how much value reason has in governance, taking due care, making careful decisions. It is possible to bring out about radical, transformative change. You can break a lot of eggs doing that. I think that arguments can be made for both sides. I would argue that spending $50 million on our infrastructure deficit in housing every year is a pretty significant change from what we were doing previously. It could be argued that it's an incremental change; it's not as big as what Nunavut is doing. But something that I would note is that as we've been studying housing, as we've been engaging with Indigenous governments about housing, as we've seen plans developed around housing, we've heard a lot of different things.

I was referring earlier in this session to the work that the Standing Committee on Social Development has been doing, and much of the advice that we're getting is how to get out of public housing, how to get out of people being dependent on the government for housing and how to create more agency in communities over their own housing plans, how to create economic development by getting people building their own homes. And that's what we've been hearing from IGs and so that looks a little bit different than just investing in public housing. I 100 percent support the $50 million a year because I think it's absolutely necessary. There is a role for public housing in this territory, absolutely. But I do think we need to be a little bit careful about how much we want to double down on that role. We need to learn from the mistakes of the past, and we need to understand that a one-size-fits-all solution is not going to work. I think that's one of the key things that we've been hearing is that there is a housing spectrum, there's a lot of different ways to address this issue, and through a multifaceted approach is how we're going to get to our goal.

So, Mr. Speaker, I'm pleased with the progress that we made to bring more funding towards housing in this budget and the next two subsequent budgets. I think it's a big achievement. It's a big achievement for our Standing Committee on Accountability and Oversight. I think it's a big achievement for the housing Minister, and it's a big achievement for our Cabinet, and it's a big achievement for consensus government, to be quite frank.

I will say a few things about what's next for me. Housing was my hill to die on as we talked about last year for this budget. Going forward, I don't plan to just sit on my laurels and all the good work is done, Mr. Speaker. I am still concerned about cuts that are being made to education. I don't think that we have a solid enough plan for workforce development and, in particular, the role that education needs to play in economic development in this territory. So that's where I'm going to be placing pressure next.

I want to be talking about some of the things that the Member for Range Lake raised today, stabilizing childcare. That is absolutely an important issue. I think it's something that we need to continue to pressure the Minister on and, most importantly, work with the Minister on and work with the childcare sector to find solutions that are going to work with the funding arrangements that have been made with the federal government with that money that's desperately needed to ensure that families can afford childcare, Mr. Speaker.

I too am interested in reforming primary care, had a lot to say during this session about how we can find -- how we can set better targets, more specific targets, and get clear about what we mean by reforming primary care and, in particular, what we are working towards.

Mr. Speaker, I care about economic development also. That's one of the reasons that I've been pressuring the Minister of ECE on changes to the waters regs and why I'm very excited about the work that the Standing Committee on Economic Development and Environment has been doing on reviewing the regulatory framework. That work is in the process of being concluded, and we'll be reporting back on that in the spring and I'm very excited about that because I think it can -- there's some recommendations coming from that that could really change the way the regulatory system operates and in particular how the GNWT relates to that system. And one of our priorities and one of the mandate items for this government is to improve regulatory, but I think that we have had a lot of difficulty around seeing exactly what we mean by improvement and so I'm hoping that that project helps put words and specifics to what we mean by that.

So that's all I have in my notes, Mr. Speaker. I think it's clear from this -- from this speech that I do support the budget. I'm very happy and thank my Cabinet colleagues for the commitment that they've made on housing. I think it's a big achievement for this Assembly. And I really look forward to seeing the results of it. My understanding is that -- from talking to folks who are in the world of housing, that this kind of investment is going to make a big difference and people are going to feel it on the ground. That's the kind of thing that I see as an achievement of this kind of work, is when I see a constituent being put in a new home. So I'll leave my comments at that, Mr. Speaker. I am supportive of this budget. And thank you.