Statements in Debates
Mr. Chair, it mostly shows up on page 176 under line B, community and mental health and addictions and, yes, $1.734 million.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am going to have to go back and review the previous audit because I don't recall saying we are doing a review that we are going to release on audiology.
We are currently reviewing a number of our services in a number of the areas that we are providing. We certainly were working to address some of the challenges and wait times that we were feeling in our experience in audiology. As a result, last sitting, last budget session, we actually increased the number of audiologists in the Northwest Territories by creating a position in the Beaufort-Delta. Currently, all three...
Well, Mr. Chair, there is $400,000 in here. We believe that, initially, we can use some of our own internal dollars to start implementing these types of things, but we need to finish the action plan and then, from there, test some of the hypotheses and theories, and then we need to figure out whether or not a business case is necessary to seek additional funds. I am not going to say that additional funds aren't necessary. I am saying that we need to do the business case and be able to have a defendable business case to compete against all initiatives that the GNWT is taking forward. Right now...
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I was waiting, and I am still waiting for the "but." However, I appreciate the Member's comments.
This really goes to the question that the honourable Member for Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh asked earlier about early childhood development and the types of things that we are doing. This is one of those areas where, with the pre- and the postnatal services that these people provide, what we can do at a territorial level can really, I think, make some profound benefits and impacts on residents across the territory.
We look forward to seeing this roll out over a number of years and...
No, Mr. Chair. "Out-of-territory physicians" refers to services received by residents of the Northwest Territories when they're outside of the Northwest Territories. For instance, we send somebody out for medical travel. We still have to pay for those services. That would be under that. The cost of locum physicians is out of our medical budget, and we don't have an extra budget for that. We have to use it out of the existing funds. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. We will endeavour to have that report to committee three days prior to the meeting that we schedule with them.
I am good. I am good.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Some of those dollars came from a consultant position we had in the department which was vacant. Then we felt that we could get more bang for our buck, more benefit by rolling it into on-the-land program for mental health and addictions support with Indigenous governments. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm not going to make that commitment, but what I will commit to is having the department sit down and quantify what it thinks it will take as far as timelines to determine and work with the authority to define how wait lists will be determined and, from there, how long it will take to find a mechanism to reasonably and responsibly make that information public on a regular basis. I will commit to having the department do the analysis on how long they think that will take, and share that with committee.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. You'll notice, in the document in front of you, there is a column of actuals for 2017-2018. As we know, those are based on the actual numbers after recalculations and whatnot in that fiscal year. Last year, 2018-2019, or rather this current year, we had a big base adjustment that brought our mains up to the $29,278,000. We anticipate that there will still be a minor supplementary that might increase that number slightly, but this is the base amount that we have moved forward with on each year. We recognize that, given that these ultimately are based on actuals, there...