Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I’m pretty sure that the situation the Member is describing didn’t happen while I was here because I certainly don’t remember it. It must have been a long time ago that it actually happened. The piece that I said after the mic went off was: Anything we do still has to be within standards, so it has to meet certain criteria. We’re open to that. I’m happy to have discussions with the communities, with the regions. I’ll be travelling with the Member to visit his communities at some point. I’m sure we’ll have an opportunity to have that discussion and hear what the...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, with the recent ruling of the Supreme Court on Metis health benefits, we’re hoping that that is in fact the case, but we actually have no details on how they plan to move forward to address that particular court ruling. We will be following up with the federal government to see what, if any, dollars will flow our way.

The Member is correct, we spend about $2 million plus dollars a year providing Metis health benefits. We’re hoping that those are the type of dollars we see from the federal government. At this time, we have no indication from them what they intend...

I can’t say when those negotiations will begin, but they certainly will not begin until we have concluded all the other collective bargaining negotiations that are underway, because as I said, it’s often the same people. As far as the pension costing, we are continuing to do that work. It isn’t simple. Superann has a lot of questions. They have a lot of concerns. We need to ensure that whatever happens is fair and reasonable. We don’t know what the cost on the individual basis might be. We certainly don’t want our employees, the employees of Hay River to be in a worse position. We want to make...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’m happy to answer the question now or we can wait till page 195 where that actually falls. It’s up to you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, late in the life of the last government, we brought in the new Mental Health Act which is going to go live, I believe in January. Part of the act is the implementation and utilization of something we call assisted community treatment. These positions are going to help us bring that to reality to help provide services that are outlined under the new legislation that didn’t exist under the old legislation.

We believe this is a significant step to move forward to providing better mental health services across the Northwest Territories. These positions, at least one...

Still not 100 per cent sure I understand the question, Mr. Chair. Under the legislation there will be board chairs for each of the regional wellness councils. Those board chairs are going to form the territorial authority, there is one authority. Other members will form regional wellness councils. In the legislation it allows us to basically keep Hay River as they are until such time as we roll them in. As a result, there will be a public administrator who is technically acting in the capacity of chair of the regional wellness council that we’ve established in Hay River, but will still...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. This is exactly why we’re moving forward with the home and continuing care action plan. It’s going to help us identify what we currently have, where the demands are, where the draw is, and what we need to do to meet the ongoing demand for home care services across the Northwest Territories, including small communities such as the ones the Member has described.

Yes, please.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think it’s important to remind everybody that one of the reasons to go to a single authority is to make sure that individuals have an opportunity to influence care where they’re going to receive care and ensure that services are custom tailored to meet their communities’ realities.

On a bigpicture scheme, as long as they have representation, it’s filtered enough through regional chairs to the territorial level of the voices going to have impact. However, as I indicated, we did have conversations with leadership at K’atlodeeche and they indicated they’d like to be on Hay...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I mean without seeing the details, we can’t say sure, but that sounds like that meets the criteria for this particular fund, and obviously we’d love to see a proposal, but I mean until we see the detail it’d be impossible to say whether it met the criteria or not. We could share the criteria with the Member, he could share it with the community and I mean we’d be happy to see a proposal.