Rylund Johnson

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I heard the deputy minister say that we are just starting to conduct some of that staff survey work, and we are starting to roll out staff satisfaction. Do we have current staff satisfaction measures right now for the department? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. My understanding is that the human resources function for the health authority actually lies within the Department of Finance, and there is a goal to kind of create a few units that work together. I am looking at the $6 million a year we plan to pay to human resources. I see last year that it has gone down $400,000, and it was gone down $700,000 from the actuals. To me, if one of our mandate items is to work on recruitment and retention, there are quite a lot of priorities under the human resourcing of health for this department. Why has that budget decreased? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The medical residency pilot, I believe, is about allowing doctors to do their residency in the North. Right now, we do two placements, I believe, a year, and the department's goal is to have four doctors completing their residency. That's my understanding of what the pilot program initially was and its intentions. Thank you.

No further questions. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Is there a formal kind of wrap-up plan being created for the COVID secretariat, and when would we be able to see that? I think that some of the things that I would like to see is a bit of evaluation of why the COVID secretariat was needed, whether its role was actually worked when we said this is going to combine all the things; it's going to stop things being done off the side of its desk -- it took a lot of authority out of the emergency management organization, so I think a wind-up plan, and will that be done and a review of how well the COVID secretariat actually did...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would like to see an increase for the Office the Public Guardian, but I guess I am even more concerned in looking at the business plan. We have asked them to do quite a bit of work, and they are already backlogged in getting people into guardianship. Is the department, somewhere else in this budget, providing policy support to that office so that they are not tasked with decreasing their wait list and completely reforming public guardianship? Are we providing policy support? Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I heard the Premier say that the $34 million budgeted for this fiscal, assuming we went a full fiscal, would actually be about $6 million lower. Can I just get an updated figure of the $31 million we budgeted for the fiscal we are presently in, how much of that we got back from the federal government? Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Admittedly, my understanding of why the health authority is able to run a deficit in the first place is not fully understood. Are there any plans to simply not allow them to run a deficit and then, if they needed to, come back through a supplementary appropriation process so that there is a little bit more ongoing tracking to this House? When they wrack up debt, it's not like it's a different debt; it's still the GNWT being held, and I think, at one point, we are probably going to have a conversation about whether that $120 million of debt is written off and brought into...

Thank, Mr. Speaker. I will make sure to ask questions to ENR on this matter at another time. Part of the reason for my concern is that I know many of the people on the project team and I know the work they are doing. It's great, but there is clearly an environmental focus there, as there should be within ENR. I question some of the targets in that they are targets; they are not legally binding. They are not the kind of things you would see in a socio-economic agreement, not that the ones the GNWT currently has are binding either. Is the GNWT willing to conduct some reporting of northern labour...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yes. I just want to start with a general comment of: I recognize main estimates are largely set by the Department of Finance and how they are set out, but this is $337 million on three pages, which makes it larger than any department. Maybe just ECE total department budget is there. I know that the reason for that is not really intentional; it's a Finance thing and how the department is organized. I think probably a look needs to be done and, when we table the budget, some more information on how we are spending $337 million be provided both to MLAs and the public...