Glen Abernethy

Thank you, Mr. Chair. No, but I will commit to keeping the chair of the committee informed. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the Government of the Northwest Territories and the Department of Health and Social Services are still supportive of midwifery services. It is a mandate item of the Government of the Northwest Territories. The report was completed with 16 recommendations. We agree with all 16 recommendations. We are now moving forward with the program design. We're moving forward on the recommendations that were made. We're looking to develop a territorial midwifery program that meets the needs of residents throughout the Northwest Territories. This will include building...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, we don't have a quality assurance division in the department, and I suppose I will need the Member to remind me. I remember talking about quality assurance in the Territorial Health and Social Services Authority who is there at the frontline level to take input from residents who have concerns so that they can explore those and make improvements. I am certainly open to have the Member remind me if that is otherwise, but it has always been clear in my mind that we had been talking about the Territorial Healthy Authority.

Now, with that in mind, we do have...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. No, this isn't the correct area. The correct area, I think it falls kind of in two different areas, and that's community health and nursing services, I think is the appropriate title. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, the primary reduction in that area is the $900,000 that we expect through the efficiencies of a single physician system in the Northwest Territories.

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.

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. 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...