Marsi cho, Mr. Speaker. There's been a lot of stories in the media, a lot of talk about the government's fiscal strategy. The Premier has issued a press release. I am glad to hear that Territorial Formula Financing reduction from the federal government is not as much as first indicated. I'd like to ask the Minister of Finance to tell us what things the government is considering to increase revenues. Thank you.
Masi, Member for Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh. Minister of Finance.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We will be tabling a revenue options paper early in this session that we had an opportunity to share with Committee, and it points out a number of options we're looking at as far as increasing our revenue.
In the recent press release that I referred to in my first question, the Premier said the government needs to take decisive action to keep our fiscal problems from getting bigger. There are a lot of rumours about what decisive action means. I would like to ask the Minister of Finance what decisive actions are being considered to resolve the fiscal problem.
Decisive action is ensuring that our expenditures don't run away from the revenue that we're able to generate, and we have tasked our officials with putting some of the options together. They will share them with Cabinet, and I will share them with committee. Depending on some of the direction that we take, they will come forward in the May/June budget cycle.
I know the government typically borrows money at the end of each year for short-term until the following year's budget is approved. This is basically bridge financing. In 2014-15, a total of $242 million was borrowed, which is a jump of about $200 million from 2010. I would like to know where this government is going on short-term borrowing. Roughly, what is the goal of the short-term borrowing at the end of this Assembly in 2019-2020?
In the last number of years we've had to use some short-term borrowing, usually beginning of the fall, as our expenditures continue to out-strip our revenues. This is not an option that we want to use too often. I mean, the option's there, we will take advantage of it, but our goal at the end of the day is to ensure that our expenditures don't exceed our revenue.
Masi. Final supplementary. Member for Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In order to keep the short-term borrowing down, as the Minister indicated, we will need to have more revenues and possibly even cuts to the government. Would the Minister give us a rough estimate for the next year? What is expected to be gained in revenues and how much, if any, is expected to be saved through cuts?
Again, we have prepared a revenue options paper that will look at some of our potential revenue options. As far as the reductions, we're still going through that exercise right now. We will get some decision from Cabinet. I have committed to working with committee to keep them up-to-date as to what we do. Then we will see it go through the business planning process, which is in April and May, and whatever feedback we have back from committee and our back-and-forth, and that'll determine what we table as the main estimates in the May/June budget session.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Yellowknife Centre.
