Yeah, thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, our fiscal situation is worsening. The economy is going faster is not going fast enough, and several disasters has put further strains on our finances yet small communities across the North are facing severe problems relating to housing, housing repairs, infrastructure, and services they require, serious investment, economic investment, social progress, fiscal constraints are competing priorities this government must balance. My questions is to the Minister of Finance.
Can the Minister of Finance provide an update on the deficit and debt position of the Northwest Territories? Mahsi.
Thank you, Member for Tu NedheWiilideh. Minister of Finance.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, later today I am tabling the interim estimates that we're proposing, and with that does come an update as to our proposed borrowing. I can say, Mr. Speaker, that we do typically run an operating surplus where available for the government. Now, we do also provide updates in the fall with the capital planning process and normally would be providing the update as well as part of the budgeting process here. We're still waiting on numbers, and we're still coming in from this wildfire season. So the last time we did May estimates, 20232024 Main Estimates, we were projecting a surplus, and followers of the House will know that over the summer when we had to come back to seek significant additional funding for wildfires that we were at that time taking away significant money from that surplus. So as those numbers have come in, that has reduced that surplus even further and may well put us into an operating deficit for this fiscal year. As I said, again, numbers are still coming in so we're still going to have to wait a little bit longer to get an actual value for that but we certainly the Member's quite right, we're in a difficult situation as a result of the ongoing challenges that we've been having over the last few years. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And thank you to the Minister of Finance. I think the biggest thing I keep thinking about is the overall deficit of this government. And looking back at the budget books, we're about $1.6 billion and one of the things we don't talk about is balancing the overall budget. So the question to the Minister is prioritizing balancing the budgets of this new government, can you tell me how would you approach on that? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, ensuring that there is a budget that is compliant with the Fiscal Responsibility Policy has always been an important feature for myself, and I expect will continue to be so under this administration. And I do reference the Fiscal Responsibility Policy because that's the document that helps guide our assurance that we're providing the budget that is sustainable.
As far as balancing the budget, having debt in and of itself for a government of our size, Mr. Speaker, is not the challenge. The challenge, though, is ensuring that in our expenditures that we don't continuously overspend as compared to our revenues, and that certainly is something that, the Member's quite right, looking back over a decade, that number does keep going up faster than our revenues keep going up. So certainly going forward now, we've laid we certainly have a lot more information and data available to us on how we can get those numbers closer, how we can get those lines together, and that can certainly be a focus for this Assembly should we choose to take that path. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thank you, Minister of Finance. Thank you for your response. I just keep thinking that when you release those documents, I'm looking forward to see it.
Balancing the budget means cuts. Will these cuts be services and investment to the Tu NedheWiilideh riding? Because we get less than 2.5 percent over the overall budget. I just want to know if that's going to be happening. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, just firstly for the Members, communities, and residents of that riding and all ridings, the budget isn't parsed out by one community at a time. A large amount of our budget is actually spent on services, programs, so for example health care services, that don't necessarily line up according to our riding line. So I certainly don't want any residents feeling like they don't get a fair shake out of the government.
With respect to cuts, Mr. Speaker, that would certainly always be the last and cuts to programs and services has to be the last thing that we look at. But there's a lot that we can do to improve our efficiency, to avoid redundancy, and significant work has been done already, and we laid ourselves a path and it's our opportunity to take it, with government renewal and with the data that's been gathered by health sustainability and can we actually look at spending our money better and more wisely now that we have that data available to us so that we can, indeed, bring ourselves to a better fiscal situation without any cuts. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister of Finance. Member from Tu NedheWiilideh. Final supplementary.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thank you to the finance Minister. Well, the biggest thing that I'm a little worried about is austerity, and I brought this up in the last Assembly. And when the Minister of the day had mentioned that this issue would be brought to the next Assembly to look at, so here we are today. So I'm just want to raise this because it's a concern. You know, will
Member from Tu NedheWiilideh, question, please.
Yeah. The question is would these measures to balance the budget be through layoffs or funding cuts? Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, I'm also the Minister responsible for the public service and the work that we do as a government can't happen without that public service. So that is I hope not a rumor that's out amongst the public service that that's where we're going to be starting to find a way for better and more responsible government. Being a responsible government, having responsible fiscal policies, does not necessarily require us to go out and get rid of those people who deliver our programs and services. It does mean looking at how we do things, looks at the duplication of services, at government renewal, are there areas where we can be more efficient, how can we operate differently and better, and how can we look internally to fund so that we're not continually adding new positions, adding more when we're not already managing the house that we're in. So I appreciate the line of questioning. I don't and I share the concern, but I certainly want to emphasize to the public servants out there that this doesn't need to happen without them at the forefront telling us, in fact, how we can do better. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister of Finance. Oral questions. Member from Mackenzie Delta.
