Glen Abernethy

Thank you. We have put these dollars in based on the actions in the plan. There aren’t any additional dollars at this point for ’14-15 and any dollars that come in the future will certainly be discussed and debated through the business planning process and future budgets.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Based on numbers that we’ve had in the past, we know that it is estimated that about 10 percent of NWT residents have no access to supplementary health benefit coverage. So that means the rest – 90 percent – have coverage of some capacity, whether it’s through private insurance, extended health benefits, NIHB, but about 10 percent don’t have this type of coverage.

It’s not an easy task, unfortunately. Because we’re talking about pensions and every authority is running on a… Sorry, that authority is running on a different pension system. We’re pretty much going to have to do a manual calculation on every employee to figure out what those costs would be and what it would cost to bring over. We should be able to get it done by the end of the upcoming fiscal year, but it is going to take a bit of time to do a thorough, comprehensive analysis. Thank you.

Yes, it is.

Mr. Chair, there are some statistics in the annual report. On page 29 it actually refers to the percentage of children receiving services in their home community under the Child and Family Services Act, and the baseline on that is 80 percent. For 2012-13 we had set a target of 83 percent, but in that same fiscal year we actually succeeded to hit levels of 87.5 percent. That information is in the annual report.

I would, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I didn’t have that memorized off the top of my head, but I conveniently had that information available, but I’ve got eight binders here so it was a little hard to find it.

The Health and Social Services department has $1.073 million dedicated to anti-poverty funding. In total the government has $2.6 million going towards anti-poverty. Within the Department of Health and Social Services, we have $200,000 under the Healthy Food for children and youth. We’re providing food vouchers for families in need through the Healthy Family and Collective Kitchens Program. So that’s...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. This was certainly a big issue in the 16th Assembly and it’s something that needs to be done. What I have committed to is we will do work on this, but we need to complete a few of our other priorities and make some human resource room to actually conduct the work. If everything is being done on the side of a desk, nothing gets done, and there is a significant amount of good work that we’re doing in the department to improve services to our residents. This does need to be done, but it’s a lower priority for us at this time. But we will continue to research and gather data...

I agree with everything the Member has just said with respect to the provision of services and how consistency is certainly the more preferred approach. We continue to have challenges hiring health professionals in the Northwest Territories, especially in some of the smaller communities. We are doing better in some areas than others, but we are still having challenges. This is true for mental health and addictions counsellors as well as community health nurses. I don’t have the exact status of Fort Liard, but I’d be happy to get that for the Member and share that with the Member.

As we move...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just for some clarity, there is a reference to this, in this motion, to $468,000 which I believe is the $468,000 that was identified in 8-39. Just for clarity purpose, the dollars that are there came from the federal government, and not the entire $468,000 were actually NWT dollars.

We had, out of that $498,000, when you combine the $468,000 and the $30,000 the year before, we had $198,000 of that and then $50,000 of that available to the Northwest Territories. Of that amount, $144,000 had to go to Nunavut and $105,000 had to go to the Yukon. One of the reasons the federal...