Today is also budget day here, of course, Mr. Speaker, and in a quick summary here -- keeping score, if you will -- as Minister Roland was reading us the news, I have more points on the good news side of my ballot than on the bad news side, Mr. Speaker.

Just to give a quick response to a couple of the highlights that I’ve heard, we will take the bad news side, Mr. Speaker. I will keep coming back to the housing agenda. The budget contains some five paragraphs of discussion about problems and issues, but there was nothing in there, Mr. Speaker, there was not one single itemized topic about what is going to be done. How many houses, what kind of an investment are we going to see? About the only concrete thing that we were shown there, was that the Housing Corporation is going to undergo a change in its mandate. But the most pressing social issue has not been addressed in this budget.

Further, Mr. Speaker, while we are on the glad side, seeing a major turnaround in our finances, thank goodness, we are also seeing more uncertainty; continued uncertainty in our ability to govern this Northwest Territories because of our inability to really know what our finances are going to be. Mr. Roland told us that it’s going to be at least the end of this year before we know what the results will be of this panel in Ottawa on how our formula financing is going to work. We are not out of the woods yet.

Mr. Speaker, on the good side we must acknowledge that we have had a $90 million dollar turnaround in our finances, from a $40 million dollar deficit forecast we are now at a $46 million dollar surplus. That is 10 percent of our budget within one year that we could not control. Again it’s an illustration of the instability in our financing situation, but that is a piece of good news, and, as well, that we are holding the line on spending. I am very proud to be a part of that administration. I think that is good news for everybody. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

---Applause