Glen Abernethy

Yes, Mr. Chair, this is the section where audiologists fall under. This is the area that funds them. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. No. Every opportunity I have or every time I meet with the federal Ministers, I mention it. I indicate our desire to have them come to the table and cover the Metis health benefits. There has been no official response to date. I will continue to raise it every opportunity I get when I am in Ottawa or when I am meeting with federal Ministers. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

We have a project team to pull together all of the relevant details and information to draft some job descriptions, but until such a time as the budgets are approved, we're not going to go ahead and draft job descriptions. Most of the information has been compiled; we still have to follow our process, job descriptions, submit them for job evaluation, get position numbers, go out for recruitment, but we're really targeting being up and running for the school year, so September 2018. I think we've got more than enough time to do that.

In the meantime, we still have been reaching out to schools...

We are providing additional resources by way of human resources to assist that staff person when they are away on training and other things so that we don't fall behind further. The number of active files has decreased over the years. We are making improvements. The assessments are done by different individuals, psychiatrists and psychologists who we have contracted with. That has really helped us bring down the number. Those relationships will continue.

We will continue to bring our case file down. We will continue to provide the services. We are building the business case. We are going to put...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. To the Member's point, with respect to the human resource unit, he is both right and wrong in his view. He's right, not all the services being offered by that unit are available to Hay River because of the fact that they're outside the public service, but they are gaining some benefits. We're looking at right now doing a transition from the human resource unit that's in the department, recognizing that it's really a front-line provider that is providing support to the authority. We're transitioning them into the authority. Once they become part of the authority, they'll...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. No, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I am pleased to be here to present the 2018-2019 Main Estimates for the Department of Health and Social Services. The total proposed budget for the department is $461,563,000. Overall, the department’s estimates propose an increase of about $38.3 million, which is an increase of 9 per cent over the 2017-2018 Main Estimates.

Highlights of the proposed estimates before you include:

Forced growth of $9.2 million;

Sunsets and other adjustments of $25.5 million, including $12.6 million to address existing base deficiencies in six high-pressure program areas that have been...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I am pretty sure that is what I just said. I am going to keep committee in the loop. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, in my opinion and I think the opinion of many people, what we do is a multi-pronged approach on tobacco cessation. It is not just a matter of raising taxes. Raising taxes might help, but raising taxes in conjunction with some of the exercises and programs we are putting in place to increase dialogue and encourage youth to stay off will probably give us better results. It is more expensive, and people understand. We hope to see better results.

I have many times suggested to the Minister of Finance that we need to be number one in tobacco taxes in Canada. I will...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I already made a commitment to move forward with exploring a Managed Alcohol Program in the sobering centre, but I indicated that we wouldn't even explore that until the sobering centre had been open a year, which would give us an opportunity to sort of get our feet wet, figure out how things are working, maximize or make sure that we are as efficient as possible before we start exploring that. Now, I do know that we did open our first sobering centre in July, but we haven't really gotten into our sobering centre per se. It will still be a number of months...