Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we heard in the House, I believe yesterday, that the Minister said that if the sup passes and the budget passes, we will be $3.2 million away from our debt wall if I heard her correctly and, of course, that is if I have my math correct. Mr. Speaker, that actually puts us at 99.8 percent of our overall debt limit. I'm asking the Minister of Finance: what is she doing to find new ways to operate budget -- sorry, operate the fiscal management of the Assembly and the territory at large that we can find ways to save money immediately such as let people work from home and other types of innovative ideas that can save the government money? Thank you.
Thank you, Member from Yellowknife Centre. Minister of Finance.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. With respect to the Assembly, the Assembly, of course, is managed by the board of management so I'll leave that to the operations of the board of management. With respect, more broadly, to the GNWT, Mr. Speaker, we certainly are -- of course that's why we introduced Restoring Balance as being an overarching strategy, fiscal strategy, for the government that would look for ways to reduce all expenditures and increase revenues.
Mr. Speaker, we did -- with respect to coming into the end of this fiscal year, we did ask the departments to consider carefully what kind of cash management and cash situation they have.
There is, of course, a difference, Mr. Speaker, between the total debt limit that we might be -- that we have and actually going near that on any given day. So perhaps I'll leave it there, Mr. Speaker. There's two more questions. I'll see what comes next. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, these strategies have yielded probably something, and I'll let the Minister explain what they have, but there's an enforcement perspective that doesn't seem to be there, including consequences. Mr. Speaker, how are we meeting these financial objectives without going over the wall, as they say, or hitting the financial wall? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So we certainly have achieved some important markers. We are around $106 million ahead of where we were at the start of this Assembly in terms of the revenues that we have either increased or expenditures that we've been able to find and reduce, and that is all the while, Mr. Speaker, remaining alive to the fact that this continues to be a challenging time for residents, that there have been a number of unexpected needs. Again, low water is one that's well known, but also a wildfire season that still had a pretty significant cost associated to this last year, with one community evacuated and I believe others under monitoring. So notwithstanding those emergencies, we've achieved over $100 million and change in terms of where we're at in our budgets. And, Mr. Speaker, we are still projecting to be able to pay for, I think, the first time, if I'm not mistaken, certainly since the 1999, the first time that we were paying for our full capital budget, projecting to do so this last year, projecting to do so into 2025-2026. So those are some pretty important achievements that we've had.
Mr. Speaker, departments do have variance monitoring that they each engage with that then goes to the Department of Finance and ultimately is coming to the financial management board so that we have a sense of where money is going at any given time. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister of Finance. Final supplementary. Member from Yellowknife Centre.
Mr. Speaker, the -- you know, kudos to the paying for the full capital budget but keep in mind that, Mr. Speaker, that only works when you don't have the ability to borrow money anymore. So in other words, you can only spend the money you have. So the finance Minister's made it clear we have no more room on our borrowing.
So, Mr. Speaker, I guess I'm really getting at, at the end of the day here, my question is what is the Minister doing from a public discussion point of view about tabling ideas, how we can rework governments better and find more efficient ways to attract both a better financial bottom line and a better sound bottom line so we don't hit the wall, financial wall, that people are concerned about because this is a major stressor among the Northerners. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Again, Mr. Speaker, we did at the initial stage of having the Restoring Balance framework go out, and, again, it was the first time ever that a fiscal strategy for an Assembly was actually made public and was made the subject of a fairly public announcement, because we wanted to get feedback, wanted to get feedback particularly from public servants who are well placed often to know where efficiencies lie. We received an enormous amount of feedback, and we have continued to receive some feedback over the course of the last year. But, again, certainly always encourage people to bring ideas forward through our departments and to their MLAs. Members of the public, too, were submitting ideas through that process. Mr. Speaker, I've -- we still have the red tape reduction working group that has a live email address and I often hear people say it's a great idea, but I'm not getting as many submissions there as I would like to see, although I think one may have just come in this morning.
So, Mr. Speaker, these are all avenues by which folks can submit their ideas and put ideas forward.
As I think I -- I had a fair bit of time yesterday, and I know I'm getting long, Mr. Speaker, we're -- I'm not -- we are -- we did increase or we sought to increase the borrowing limit from the federal government to increase that flexibility but, Mr. Speaker, we are still in a position where we -- we're not expecting to hit it this fiscal year. We are looking forward to the next fiscal year in terms of what we are -- we want to make sure we have some room, and we want to have that room because we want to achieve the priorities of this Assembly which are ones that look towards our future. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
