Caroline Wawzonek

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I certainly do have that -- it's not necessarily in the supplementary estimate documents or background materials; I certainly can get that to Members. I'm just not finding -- I mean, that's what I'm digging back now to before the winter break. So I don't have that coming up quickly. Yes, I'll have to get back to the Member with the breakdown of how we landed on that number. Thank you.

Back again, Mr. Chair, we have on my left deputy minister of finance Bill MacKay, and on my right Mandi Bolstad, the deputy secretary to the financial management board.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, fundamentally, the costs that go into generating power, whether it's the fuel or whether it's the upkeep, continue to grow, and the sales of power in the Northwest Territories remain flat, and that has been the case for a very long time, long before any -- before this Assembly was composed. So, you know, we can certainly try to increase those to whom we are selling, and in particular, it's, you know, not a handful of residential customers and probably not even converting a handful to electric heating, but to look for industrial customers. So the power...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yes, Mr. Chair, briefly. I am here to present Tabled Document 279-20(1), Supplementary Estimates (Operations Expenditures), No. 2, 2024-2025. This document proposes a total appropriation increase of $74.725 million comprised of the following items:

$16.9 million to provide funding to address the Marine Transportation Services projected deficit for 2024-2025;

$14.7 million to support the increase in road construction and maintenance costs, community support for fuel resupply, and utilities and lease costs;

$14.5 million to support health care operations in the NWT; and,

$12...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, that would only be in a short-term sense. Again, I expect this is going to come up here today. So not as a way of running their operations. I think perhaps the original question was whether they're expected to have a balanced operating budget. And, yes, they're expected to have a balanced operating budget, but they can use debt to take on infrastructure costs. Again, Mr. Chair, I don't necessarily have all this in front of me, and I'm more than happy to follow up with Members if I -- if -- with NTPC, they may well be quite happy to come and speak to Members...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So these eight items were budgeted originally under the operations budget. This is where seeing going from Fund 1 to Fund 2 is part of just moving that they were -- the amount that we're putting in to the infrastructure operations part -- or the infrastructure budget here is coming off of the operations budget to reflect that. So they're just -- they're moving in terms of the accounting, how they're being accounted -- considered in the accounting. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I could certainly run that number for the House and for the Member. I don't have that here. It would -- it may, again, bit of me having to sort of tea leaf what the PUB's final rate increase would necessarily be. I don't know that. I can certainly -- once that's done, we could certainly consider coming back. Obviously, that's the rule of the House. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, this is a 75/25 or 75 percent/25 percent cost share project, so $1.913 million is offset by revenues from the Government of Canada. Thank you.

Mr. Chair, I think the new rate application will reflect a subsidy of $12 million over four years, and I -- again, I don't -- I believe it will say that it's then going from 24.8 down to 15. It's from the perspective of the public is where I want to add again that that's only their energy side of their bill, not the total bill, and it doesn't necessarily yet take into account that there was the increase in July. So the GRA reflects that total rate increase but from the perspective of the public, they've already seen a small increase in July, and it is not the whole bill that goes up 25 percent...

Yes, please, Mr. Chair.