Sandy Lee

Our commitment is to bring that forward into the next business plan process. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, I just wanted to reiterate that if the committee is happy or it is acceptable to them, that we continue working on setting up these committees as the way we have been and do our utmost to get them set up, I am happy to accept that and we will continue to work on that. We will be obviously using existing resources to do that, but I was under the assumption that the committee wanted us to get more aggressive about it. This is why we came up with a plan. I would like to ask Dana to give you details on how we arrived at these numbers. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I responded to the chair of Standing Committee on Social Programs on that issue on February 25th and indicated that we will implement that.

Mr. Chair, I think the challenge we have here is a timing issue, because the standing committee report came out in October. By then we had gone through the business plan review, the budget was wrapped up in January and presented to the House in February. There was not enough time or space in the budget to incorporate as much as the Members thought that we should. We did accept many of the recommendations but there are pending resources.

The second thing is why don’t you just take 60 kids out of the system and use that money. I’d have to say if any of those 60 kids could be taken out, they...

Yes, please, Mr. Chairman.

I just want to say that… And I am answering the Member’s question. The business plan speaks of not just the dollar amounts but some of the action items that the department wants to do. Dollars aren’t exactly always attached to some of those action items. It’s a business plan, it’s a blueprint where the department’s going to go, any department’s going to go for next year.

Like I stated before, I think this is about the third time I’m saying it, yes, in the business plan we said we will work to set up children and family services committees, like we have always done before. I am here admitting to...

The short answer is yes, we would review each program separately and give them all due consideration. Just for the record, I think we should make it clear that a decision has not been made to discontinue the Nurse Practitioner Program. We did let them know that current funding commitment is until 2012 but, as the Member knows, because we had an in-depth briefing, we are reviewing the entire, well, we’re reviewing the Human Resource Training Program that we have with Department of Health and Social Services, not only because we’re always under financial constraints, but also because we want to...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to just remind the Member, who is standing committee chair, that I agree with him and I said that in my letter on February 25th that the prevention, and I quote, “the prevention oriented recommendations of Standing Committee on Social Programs will, in the long-term, have a positive effect on these expenditures.” I agree with him. The standing committee review of the CFSA and those recommendations about prevention and increasing child and service committees and doing more of that work, I agree with him that that is a positive step and I’ve said that.

Now the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to thank the Member for the information he provided in his Member’s statement, because it is information that we are aware of. We had our briefing session on that. We are aware of the successes and challenges in the human resource programs that we have for the health care professionals. As the Member stated, I’d like to confirm that we are reviewing the program. We have to look at it fairly and comprehensively because we do have limited dollars, but at the same time we need to meet our priorities. So we will continue with that review.

With respect to the Nurse...

Mr. Chairman, the letter that I sent to the standing committee on February 25th is the analysis we have done. It is the government’s position on this issue. Thank you.