Glen Abernethy

Thank you, Mr. Chair. What positions specifically?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I’ve committed to providing the Standing Committee on Social Programs or Social Development, or whatever it’s called today, sorry, a comprehensive briefing on health transformation, at which point we’ll be describing this. But in short, and we will certainly go into more detail, some of the changes that we’re seeing are a result of an audit that was done by the Auditor General of Canada that said basically our system lacks all accountability and that there is no real solid reporting mechanisms, just streams. The board reports directly to the Minister. The...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’m a little confused. What line is the Member referring to? I don’t think homecare falls under this section. Actually, homecare doesn’t fall under this section. What line is the Member referring to?

Exactly one of the reasons that we created the Progressive Experience Program: it does provide some additional money to departments so that they have some resources to actually hire somebody in a progressive experience situation. They would hire somebody who comes in with particular education, that matches a particular activity the department is trying to do, and then they would rehire the student again and again and again, allowing them to build experience as they move through their education. These are the dollars that we’re making available to try to encourage some of the departments to...

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and through the entire exercise, we heard clearly from people across the Northwest Territories that they wanted a health system that met their needs and focused on the client. We moved forward with health transformation. The residents across the Northwest Territories were also very, very clear that they didn’t want to see centralization. This isn’t about centralization. This is about bringing the system together to work together. It isn’t resulting in positions being taken away from communities across the Northwest Territories. The frontline positions are critical care...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. To the Member’s point, I mean, I agree. We provide these dollars. We don’t dictate what program they design. In some cases, regions have actually pooled it with other money to do bigger initiatives. We offer every region $125,000 of the $1 million. Some have better uptake than others. I can give you some breakdown of the 201516 Actuals.

The Akaitcho Territory Government utilized the entire $125,000. The Deh Cho Friendship Centre took $40,000. The Gwich’in Tribal Council got $144,000. The Inuvialuit Regional Corporation got $325,000. The Inuvik Community Corp got $39,000...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, we do have the ability to have during negotiations discussions with the federal government on NIHB and its coverage, and we are planning, we are going to be going into negotiations soon where we will certainly make some points about some specific things that are covered that confuse us a little, and we will certainly raise those issues. We don’t just mirror NIHB for Metis health benefits. We also mirror NIHB for extended health benefits. It we get into a position where we start changing the benefits that we provide to some people in the Northwest Territories...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Normally, because it was O and M dollars, it would lapse, but given that these dollars are going to be used for a technical or a project infrastructuretype thing, we’re looking to have those dollars rolled over into capital, and then we can roll them over into the year or to the next year so that we can continue to work with Alberta.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The discrepancy is because I jumped back a page. The outofterritorial hospitals, the forced growth doesn’t appear on page 181, but it is included on page 180. This whole area in total did get an increase of about $2 million in those areas, the ones I outlined previously.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the hiring decisions for summer students, as with all positions, actually lies with the department. With respect to summer student hiring, the role for the Department of Human Resources is to facilitate the database. We actually facilitate the database, make it available to students, encourage students to get registered. When a department indicates that they have a desire for some summer students, they will let us know the skill set they’re looking for, we search our database, we provide those resumes to the individual departments so that they can actually...