Bob McLeod

Mr. Chair, I guess we didn’t want to create more work than we needed to. Based on the knowledge of the programs, we felt we knew in what areas we could make reductions. I guess, essentially, we did an analysis without formalizing it.

My understanding is the funding is more closely aligned with the uptake of the program now.

That’s exactly the reason we set up that panel.

Mr. Chair, we’ll check into whether that report was released publicly. It appears that some of the Members may have seen it. Certainly, I would want to share it with the Member. I just have to confirm whether there are any restrictions on the circulation of it. I don’t see why there would be, but I’ll just confirm that and let the Member know and give her a copy of it.

We can do that on the same basis as we provided this list.

The position was a human resources assistant. It was filled with a casual at the time, and it was felt we could spread the workload among the other three people.

The survey the Member is referring to is an employee satisfaction survey, and this is something that is conducted across Canada in all the provinces and territories. We’ve all agreed we would do surveys every two years. The first survey was done in 2006, and also it was done again this year, 2008.

I’m pleased to note that the respondents have increased by about 10 per cent. Perhaps it was the UNW advertising that caused more people to complete the survey. My reading of the survey results — and we are still doing additional analysis, and the letter I wrote to the Members was circulated in the...

As I’ve told some of the Members, this is certainly an option we’re prepared to look at for potentially affected employees. And we are seeking some direction from the standing committees, as we briefed them. If we get some direction, we’re quite prepared to look at that.

Mr. Chair, at my constituency meeting, when we talked about nurses graduating from Aurora College, I was subjected to the same comments that all of them were going south because they weren’t being offered appropriate jobs within the health care system. When I checked into it, I found out there were maybe two or three that hadn’t accepted jobs within the NWT, and two or three were going south for different reasons.

As to the number of agency nurses, there used to be 13 or 14 on an average day, and now there are maybe three or four coming in from the south.

The budget has been reduced by $100,000.