Sandy Lee

The Premier is correct in saying the PA’s work is not time specific. He’s been appointed as the public administrator, and he will be in that office until such time as he’s removed by me as Minister.

What I meant when I said in the House that I have given the public administrator three months to do some work and give me some recommendations is that it was specifically to the work following the zero-based review. As I stated earlier, the zero-based review gave us lots of information that required additional analysis, and he’s using that information as a guideline. Also, he’s on the ground looking...

We don’t have that level of detail on exactly what’s causing the shortfall there.

I appreciate the Member’s comments. I don’t believe there were questions there.

Mr. Chairman, we have positions for every NP we have in the Territories, and we’ll have more coming, whether we have positions for them. As I said earlier, we may not be able to place them exactly where they want them. It’s like any other northern grads we train. Whether we support lawyers to be trained down south, or doctors, engineers, plumbers.... We, as a government, are committed to hiring these and offering them positions. It’s just that they may not all be able to work at the hospital, or in the exact section they would like to, because you have to respect the right of the operator of...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I do not have information on unfunded positions for authorities. I would be happy to make a commitment to get back to the Member about Stanton.

The analysis of the department and my approach — I say it again and I’ve said it many times — is to minimize the impact on the front-line health and social service workers. For that reason, the largest brunt came in the headquarters positions. I really don’t want us to characterize these affected positions as ones that were not needed or that were not necessary. I think those are positions that had work to do, but under the circumstances and under the fiscal situation, we’ve had to reorganize the staffing to deliver the services but reduce resources where possible. Once again, it’s a choice...

Mr. Chairman, the information I have is that the money will be used to provide nursing staff in smaller communities, as well as expanding nurse practitioner services in communities.

There’s lots of information that’s required there. The information I have is that the vacancy rate at Stanton for nurses has been decreasing over the years. I could give him specific information on that.

The overtime hours there.... I think I saw the stats where it’s a little bit less than the national figure, and I could provide the Members with that. Over the years the casual nurses float pool has increased NWT-wide, making it possible for us to use fewer agency nurses.

I could advise the Member that right now at Stanton we do have the stand-by, the float pool nurses, of nine. There has been a...

Mr. Chairman, I think I heard it right the first time. I don’t agree with the premise that by eliminating some of these positions we’re suggesting that any of these positions are not contributing to the mandate. I don’t think that’s fair to the positions affected or persons affected. I don’t think that’s the right conclusion to make.

I think, Mr. Chairman, communications is an important part of our mandate, as are all other divisions in the department. As I stated earlier — and I’ve said this many a time — what you will see if you look at the positions affected in the department is that we have...

Could I ask the deputy minister to provide that information.