Caroline Wawzonek

Mr. Speaker, I wish to advise the House that the honourable Member from Hay River North, the Premier, will be absent from the House for the remainder of this week to attend to the Council of Federation in Washington, DC. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, so no, we're not overstating the budget to make it all look better. It doesn't have that kind of effect on it, Mr. Chair. And perhaps given that this is getting into the process of how it is actually budgeted, I might start with the deputy minister but we might turn to director of shared corporate services too. Thank you.

to the deputy minister, please.

Mr. Speaker, I wish to present to the House Bill 20, Supplementary Appropriation Act (Operations Expenditures and Borrowing Authorization), No. 2, 2024-2025, to be read for the first time. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So I have as of March 31st of last year, so the actuals coming in from last fiscal, we have a breakdown of equity at 24.2 percent fixed income. Yields or bonds are at 9.8 percent fixed income. Short term, 54.5 percent. There's cash equivalence of just under 11 percent. And we do yet accrue interest at 5 -- .5 percent as well as dividends at a small marginal amount, 0.5 percent. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair. No, and, Mr. Chair, happy to spend a bit more time on it. I think this is actually an important -- quite an important concept that happens across different line items, and this is a good one to use as any.

So we -- the 2023-2024 number that you see there is actuals. We don't get that until much later in the budget cycle. Obviously, we're filing public accounts, you know, after the fact when the fiscal year is well over and we're already well into the next cycle, so the budget would have already been established in 2024-2025 and would have stayed at 13.088 unless we...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, that's an excellent question and to my knowledge, that's exactly the kind of question that is being looked at by the health sustainability unit. I don't have the trends in the supplementary estimates document or background. I can say that this may well include some of the additional amounts that we would have incurred -- oh no, those things -- we did see certainly a bump when the evacuations took place, for example, in 2023, but that would have been dealt with in the past fiscal year. So as far as beyond that for trends, as I say, it is certainly something that...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yes, if we borrow more, we have to pay more but, Mr. Chair, the limit is just the maximum amount that we can borrow, not necessarily money that we are, in fact, borrowing, so that -- what would be proposed for -- to be available for borrowing comes through in the budget every year so you will see the -- that there's -- in the main estimates, one of the front end pages has the proposed borrowing plan and that is what's -- where it is reflecting amounts that are anticipated year to year, long-term debt and short-term debt. That's the portion that we would see potentially...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I mean, utilities costs can and do include heating, electricity, water, sewage, garbage collection, so there are over 400 different individual assets that are managed by the Department of Infrastructure and depending on each community, there are some changes. One that I'd certainly point to quickly is the heating costs and obviously heating fuel, the cost both of providing it and then the actual costs have been very volatile over the last several years, including last year. Electricity costs obviously saw a bit of an increase already in July. And water/sewage may be...

Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair. Yes, that does look correct. So both -- all three, actually, we have Stanton, Inuvik, as well as the Tlicho. Thank you.