Floyd Roland

Mr. Chairman, Supplementary Appropriation Act, No. 2, 2007-2008 requests authority for additional appropriations of $6.004 million for operations expenditures and $3.615 million for capital investment expenditures in the 2007-2008 fiscal year.

Major items included in this request for operations expenditures include:

$2.45 million for the creation and implementation of a Tourism Product Diversification and Marketing Program;

$1.98 million to fund the projected shortfall of the forest fire suppression budget for the 2007 fire season. This amount is net of recoveries through the Mutual Aid...

Mr. Speaker, I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Mackenzie Delta, that Bill 9, Write-off of Debts Act, 2007-2008, be read for the third time. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the patient wait times guaranteed trust funding, we’ve worked with the federal government to come up with a plan of how we think in the Northwest Territories would have best impact for front line and that is targeted at some of the smaller community issues. We have difficulty getting nurses into our smaller centres and having the adequate training to go into the smaller centres. So what we’ve worked on is a number of programs where we see front line being critical to the delivery of health care in the Northwest Territories. One is a Community Health...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, quite easily I could stand up and say, yes, we will look into it. But as the Member is well aware, we have looked into this situation. The fact is, as a government, as I stated earlier, we are not in the situation of dealing in this public forum on a case-by-case scenario. There are avenues for that. We have sat down as departments to work on a case management situation. We are trying to be as caring as possible, but there has to be some acceptance. There are limitations to what we can do as the Government of the Northwest Territories. Thank you, Mr...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, as I had stated, again, I would be prepared to sit down with committee and go through those findings. Upon having a second look at it, decide where we can go with that if there is further release of that information. I would have to have a better look at that before I can make that commitment. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, there was not a full report, as the Member stated, about all of the factors and it doesn’t go into the fact that the Member has raised about the Minister said no, there was no breech. There was a specific case looked at, but as a department we would look at doing a full review of the conversion back to 8.9 and implementation. Once it’s complete we would look at doing that. The specific issue itself, the Minister hasn’t been given a copy of the specific incident. That hasn’t been supplied to myself as Minister. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the department has some flexibility. In fact, what we have found in a number of cases where we work on case management with either Education, Culture and Employment or the Housing Corporation is to look at the case and work together on trying to find solutions. It is not our practice to deal case by case in this scenario. But as the Member is aware, all departments have been very involved in this and looking forward to try to find some solutions that fit. That doesn’t mean, as was stated earlier, that we can go beyond what our programs are, but we have...

I am sorry, Mr. Chair; I missed that last question.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I would have to go back to see if I had actually mentioned the Audit Bureau as being the one, but what we have done, as Mr. Cleveland has stated, is the initial look at implementation done in 2000. But while the systems were still within FMBS before we created or just shortly after creating the Department of Human Resources, there was another activity looked at. We hired an outside group to review the work that was being done and how we were using the PeopleSoft system and how we continue to use our processes. That was done by the Hackett Group. It was...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, this process has been very involved. Out of the total number of staff working at that facility, 345 staff took the time to go into the initial survey portion. That is a significant number. Approximately 84 percent of our staff did take part in that initial survey. I think, number one, that shows a very good process where they became involved. The second set of processes will be direct involvement through unit staff meetings building up to the overall meeting with both groups. Again, as I stated, the Bureau of Statistics as well as our consultant...