Floyd Roland

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I think one of the things we have to do is there are recommendations. In viewing that report and what it's looked at and recommendations it comes out with, first we have to compare apples to apples. The NGOs in this territory, if we are going to do a comparison, should be compared to other NGOs in other jurisdictions and then look at an adjustment going forward for the cost of doing business in the Northwest Territories. If we are going to connect the dots, we should go a long way back to see how some of these organizations were established. Some of these...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, to my right is the secretary to the FMB, Mr. Mark Cleveland; and to my left is Mr. Sandy Kalgutkar, director of budget evaluation.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we should be realistic in the fact that with as many employees over at the Stanton facility, we’ve gone into a process where we do a survey, and it was done through the Bureau of Statistics, that they do a survey with employees there and one out of every five goes into a further in-depth survey and that’s the report we’re working on. We are not playing with that report. In fact, I believe that report will come back and show for the majority of things there’s satisfaction with the work around that facility, the work environment. There are a number of...

Mr. Chairman, Supplementary Appropriation Act, No. 4, 2006-2007 requests authority for additional appropriations of $13.486 million for operations expenditures for departmental over-expenditures in the 2006-2007 fiscal year.

The requests include:

$10.395 million to increase the accrual for environmental liabilities related to the estimated costs to remediate NWT contaminated sites that are the responsibility of the GNWT, pursuant to Public Sector Accounting Board requirements; and

$3.091 million for over-expenditures in the Department of Health and Social Services related to higher than...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, that’s another area we’ve been working on, is going to southern universities and colleges to attract the new graduate nurses to the Northwest Territories. I’d have to check on what sort of incentives we have. We know for the Northwest Territories we have one of the best systems in place through our Student Financial Assistance Program, as well as what we’ve done through the Community Health Nurse Development Program, or the CHN Program as we call it, and trying to take our nurse graduates right out of their courses and give them additional education...

Yes, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, to my right is the secretary to the FMB, Mr. Mark Cleveland; and to my left is Louise Lavoie, assistant comptroller general.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the situation we find ourselves in, if we were to go after a dedicated facility as a Department of Health and Social Services, we’d have to work through our capital plan, get it established, get agreement that it was a priority that it would receive the funds. There is another route that we are working with and that is the workplace shortfall capital fund and we’re putting a plan together to try to see if we can access that to help us in our office shortfall right now. From time to time, whether it’s in this facility or other facilities throughout the...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, as we proceed with this and go to implementation, one of the things we will be working on is a transition plan looking at certain areas such as timing and how things will flow. That’s one of the things we will take into consideration. Of course, there would be some cases because we will have to work with individuals and do the notification; there may be some time lag as well. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the surgery ward, as the Member stated earlier, for a number of years now when they look at the utilization rates, the number of surgeries that were being done, the elective surgeries being done, there’s a number of times throughout the year when the volumes drop. So looking at how we utilize our staff best and our facility, that’s been decided quite some time ago, but we would, during a number of times throughout the year, close the surgery ward down to elective surgeries. Everybody remains on call if there is surgery required and that continues to...