Glen Abernethy

That was done in the past when we did the assessment previously in 2005. I am pretty sure that’s accurate, I might be off a little bit. We would have to do the same to make sure that if we move forward and it is reasonable to move forward based on cost, that we are basing it on fully understood numbers.

Thank you. The $1.073 million in Health and Social Services and the $1.53 million in the other departments totaling $2.603 million are additions to the base.

It’s not in the strategic plan for the 17th Assembly, but it doesn’t mean that we don’t continue to do analysis and collect data that will help us be informed when the department does move forward with reviewing this more thoroughly. We do have a significant number of projects on the go that are going to improve the health and the care and the future of residents, and those need to be our priority for the remainder of this term.

Thank you, Madam Chair. With me today are Jeannie Mathison, director of finance with the Department of Health and Social Services; and Debbie DeLancey, the deputy minister.

Yes, please.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The dollars identified here are the dollars that are provided to the authorities to provide services in regions and communities.

Thank you, Madam Chair. The Hay River Health and Social Services Authority is actually outside of the public service, so the employees and the management in that authority are not GNWT employees in any capacity. We do provide funding to them as we do with other authorities. I believe it was in 2005 I pushed to bring the Hay River Health and Social Services Authority into the public service and the price tag at that time was about $2 million to bring in the pensions and whatnot. We continue to have discussions with the authority. We continue to explore possibilities to bring them in. The price...

Thank you, Madam Chair. We’re just pulling out the exact details. We have it. It’s on one of my sheets here, I know that. But to start off, we have the $650,000 that was identified on the previous page, 8-14, that I already answered Mr. Bromley on. We’ve got some money in for a senior advisor position, which is $163,000. We’ve got money in for the anti-poverty roundtable meetings, research and communications. This is the development and working towards the development of the territorial action plan, $60,000. I actually have a sheet that has all this on it, I just don’t know where it is. Can we...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We do prefer to keep our residents in the Northwest Territories and we do have a territorial bed management program that helps us, where possible, keep our residents here in the Northwest Territories. We continue to use services in the South – MRIs, other things – and where load is there, we will send our residents south for programming, but we do our best to keep everybody in the North as much as possible. We don’t offer every service that’s offered in the South, so from time to time our residents do have to go down.

Arrangements for travel are made through the medical travel Stanton office. The Stanton Territorial Hospital and the Department of Health and Social Services pays for travel and accommodation costs for when individuals are going out for treatment referred by the government. Currently, the medical travel office has put in place guidelines that denies travel assistance home when an individual leaves treatment early. If they complete their training they would be covered. This was only recently brought to the department’s attention, and I have directed the department to ensure that this guideline...