Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker -- and thank you to my colleague. Mr. Speaker, I just want to ask the Minister of Finance, have we given up on Restoring Balance, the fiscal sustainability strategy of this government? Thank you.
Good question.
Thank you, Member from Range Lake. Minister of Finance.
(audio) Mr. Speaker.
Can the Minister explain her budget, then? Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, I'm not sure that I'm -- I'll wait a minute.
Question out of order. Member from Range Lake.
Thank you. Thank you -- oh, Mr. Speaker, thank you. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, when can this House expect to see the cuts that are promised that will get us to $150 million in additional surplus that the policy puts up because we aren't seeing it with the estimates that have been coming out to date. I'm not talking specifically about what's in those estimates, but we have not seen those -- the range of cuts that have been promised, that people are concerned about, people want to know what's going on. So if we're still doing the strategy, when are we actually going to see these reductions? Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, only one side of this House is talking about cuts. The government is not talking about widespread rampant cuts. What we have talked about is having a budget that is providing stability. Beyond -- I won't get into the details of it because that's one of the rules of the House the public may not be familiar with, that we don't talk about things that are still going through the processes of the committee that happen on the floor later today. But, Mr. Speaker, Restoring Balance is about just that. It's about restoring balance. It's not about cutting things when we don't need to or when we can't. It's about ensuring that we have financial future. We have achieved some of the goals of that already. In the last budget, we had some reductions that resulted in us having a significant surplus, and that got us through a very difficult year of low water among high fire -- and among other various challenges.
Now, again, we're coming forward and saying we are looking to spend all of what we need to on our capital budget so we don't need to take on debt for that. We're expecting to do the same this year as well. And that's all part of Restoring Balance.
Mr. Speaker, we ultimately would like to see our total debt come down. The net debt is a number that I certainly keep an eye on. But, Mr. Speaker, we need to do that in a methodical way. We are in a time of uncertainty, both in the territories but particularly in Canada and, really, around the world right now. And so with that, Mr. Speaker, we need to maintain balance. We want to restore balance. But we want to do it in a way that is reasonable and responsible. Thank you.
