Rylund Johnson

Housing, housing, housing, Mr. Speaker. It's all we seem to talk about in this House. And, Mr. Speaker, credit is due that this Assembly has delivered more housing money than we have seen in decades, largely thanks to a lot of federal programs that have rolled out to both the GNWT and Indigenous governments. Yet, Mr. Speaker, we have absolutely no sense whether we have made any progress on ending homelessness in this territory, which ultimately is the goal, Mr. Speaker. And I suspect we have not made any progress at all, Mr. Speaker. I suspect, at best, we are trying as hard as we can against...

Yeah, thank you. You know, I get we're probably not going to finish everything up. But can someone just explain to me I mean, there's certain positions where clearly or it seems to me come April 1 you absolutely have to decide, you know, who is the superintendent in a region. To just have two people saying they are this regional superintendent for ECC seems a recipe for disaster. So, you know, how can someone just explain to me how we decide that? Is it a public competition, do we does the deputy minister and the Minister appoint one of the two? Could anyone, in theory, apply; I just want...

Thank you, Madam Chair. When can we expect to see an organizational chart for the new department? Thank you.

Yeah, thank you, Mr. Speaker. You know what, I'm actually glad to hear that. I think we're getting into semantics. When people say end homelessness, they mean that when you go out and count the people on the street, they haven't been chronically homeless usually for a period of about three months. You know, you want to try and get someone back into housing in some sort of form, whether it's transitional, in three months. So I don't want to get into semantics of what ending homelessness does as long as we're somewhat in the same ballpark.

My real question my next question, though, Mr. Speaker...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. You know, it's kind of been a long march to one day the GNWT would have a plan to address homelessness. You kind of think it would be something we'd have in the first place, but I'm hoping that the Premier could give us some good news and update the House on when the strategy to address homelessness will be complete? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Can I get an answer so okay, the goal for April 1st to have all the ADMs that I can see on this chart here and all the directors in place. Would that mean that they are all just acting in those roles, or would they actually have been hired to that role through the HR processes? Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm going to ask some questions about the deficit, which I think could be asked here considering this is where all the finance people go or probably on the overall summary. But can someone just tell me what we project the health authority deficit to be for the current fiscal year we're sitting in and what we then expect that to bring the total cumulative deficit to? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I just different set of questions. I wanted to follow up. I heard the Minister of Health and Social Services say that we have a 40 percent vacancy rate amongst our doctors which, you know, nobody's happy with that percentage; I'm sure we all agree on that. I just want to know one of the paths to increasing that is to make sure we are training and growing our own doctors and making sure we do have the capacity to take on medical resident students. I'm hoping the Minister of health could update this House how many residencies we presently have. Thank you.

There is some funding under the capital project for the transition into the new facility as well as some limited funding in this $8.6 million.

The $844,000 is primarily with a few contractors under our administration or information services, mail chargebacks, Xerox under finance, and some administrative contracts such as French language services, College of Physicians and Surgeons, and the Alberta // Renal. Thank you.