David Ramsay

I’d hope that happens sooner rather than later. This is year three of four for the current government and that’s something I think that we need to try to get concluded before the next government comes in.

The other thing, we’re spending close to $1 million on this upgrade and on the O and M costs we’re spending $125,000 a year. Maybe I missed the answer to Mr. Bromley’s question, but is that for a staff person to manage the new module?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just want to pick up where my colleague Mr. Bromley was asking questions on the contract management module. I would equate it to, you know, last year we bought a souped up Porsche, we got it home and we found out it’s got no air conditioning. That’s the kind of thing that really bothers me, when the government spends millions of dollars on new, state-of-the-art software system and SAM and it can’t manage contracts that the government has. It’s kind of ridiculous that a year later we want to spend another million dollars on that component, that piece of it.

I’m not...

Mr. Speaker, I think the Minister is missing my point. My point is that the Minister was nowhere to be found during this discussion on the closure of that airport. There was no public statement issued by this government whatsoever, and I think that was the wrong thing to do, Mr. Speaker. Like I said, our responsibilities are to the people of the Northwest Territories and we have to make sure that our interests are known, respected and accounted for at every table. I don’t think we should be going down there and telling them how they should develop their plans, but every interest of the people...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to follow up with my colleagues. Mr. Menicoche and Mr. Hawkins had questions to the Minister of Health earlier and I want to follow up on that.

I find it very interesting that the Minister can stand up here in the House time and time again and say how very, very important this issue is and how deeply involved her and the government are when the decision to close the Edmonton City Centre Airport was made without any vocal outcry from our government or from our Minister.

Mr. Speaker, this happened when people in our communities were coming to us and saying, what is...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to just comment briefly on this. I want to start off by thanking the NWT Tourism and the board. They were in favour of Bill 9 and the deletion of the Tourist Deposit Assurance Program.

Given what’s happened to the barren-ground caribou outfitters in the Northwest Territories, I think the government’s got some bigger issues on its plate that it’s going to have to deal with. In the money that is being thrown at this assurance program, and it’s over $300,000, Mr. Chairman, that’s money that could be better spent looking at programming and ways to keep what operators...

Just one other question. When we purchased SAM, how come we didn’t buy something that would incorporate contract management inside of SAM and why are we spending $1 million a year later? We should have been ensured that SAM was going to cover off the needs of the government that we required. Obviously it didn’t and we’re spending $1 million a year later, it doesn’t make a lot of sense. So maybe we weren’t shopping at the right store or with the right company. There were a lot of discussions around who we ended up doing business with and maybe there was another model out there, Mr. Chairman...

So maybe the Minister can commit that in fact the contract registry, BIP monitoring and the efforts that ITI are going to be migrated over to the Department of Finance and managed under this new $1 million upgrade. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are for the Minister of Health and Social Services. It gets back to my Member’s statement from earlier today and one I made last week pertaining to deficits being run up at the various health authorities across the Northwest Territories.

In the past three years, the Minister said she has been in her position as Minister of Health and Social Services and brought in new management teams and a new DM. She has also brought in deficit-fighting plans that never seem to see the light of day and aren’t being implemented whatsoever. I would like to ask the...

I want to relate this back to us spending millions and millions of capital dollars. Is it the department’s intention, if we are going to build up these facilities in close proximity to each other, are we going to have a resident doctor or doctors in Fort Smith and Hay River? Is that the intended purposes here? If that’s not the case, then maybe we need to rethink some things here.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just getting back to the discussion we had earlier on whether or not either one of the Fort Smith or Hay River centres is going to be deemed to be the regional centre. It was a bit confusing for me. Are there not requirements like staffing and programming levels in a community that would suggest you spend $28 million there? If that is the case, maybe the Minister has stats or figures on what the staffing level is at the facility in Hay River and the one at Fort Smith.