Tom Beaulieu

How can the department share povertyrelated health information with other GNWT departments and other Ministers to improve the whole government's approach to eliminating poverty?

Marci, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I have questions for the Minister of Health and Social Services on my Member's statement. When it comes to NWT's health performance, we publicly measure things like diabetes, immunization, school readiness, smoking, obesity, but we don't track poverty. My first question for the Minister is, pillar two of the action plan to reduce and eliminate poverty in NWT is healthy living and reaching our potential. Can the Minister expand on some of the department's achievements in this area during the 18th Assembly, and how these relate directly to poverty and poverty's...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Confronting poverty can feel like a daunting chicken-and-egg problem. What do we tackle first? Are our people poor because they do not have jobs, or are they unemployed because they are poor? Are people poor because they are unhealthy, or vice versa?

The Department of Justice recently piloted an integrated case management project where different departments worked together to better serve clients. I wonder if we couldn't pilot something similar in health with a poverty focus, with expertise from Health, Education, even ITI, for traditional knowledge and economic know-how...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I move that we report progress. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

---Carried

Another interesting dynamic about the PeopleSoft report, as I said, essentially it's generated from the main estimates. There is something that is not in report that I would like to also request the Minister to provide, and that is the amount of casuals who we have in the GNWT, long-term casuals. Perhaps any casuals who have been on longer than six months. I'm not referring to casuals where they work for a very short period of time and don’t come back, but I am referring to casuals who meet the requirements to a certain degree and then get some break and then get back on, and I believe that...

Marci cho, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I'd like to ask the Minister of Human Resources a couple of questions on the PeopleSoft report. I'd like to ask the Minister if the Minister can provide the latest full PeopleSoft report to committee? Thank you.

Marci cho, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I'm not really changing directions here. I'm trying to more or less talk about PeopleSoft, but at this point on April 1st there's going to be some changes to PeopleSoft as a result of any reductions that may be in the budget. I'd like to ask the Minister when there's reductions that the Minister refers to, and the number was given in here and I don’t want to get into the numbers things, but there was an interesting dynamic in there where indicated that many of those positions were not filled. I'd like to know if those positions were actually filled with...

I'm not expecting the Minister to maybe give me a definite answer in this, but if I recall the PeopleSoft reports did not identify unfunded positions, so the PeopleSoft report was essentially generated from the main estimates. I'd like to ask the Minister, while providing the PeopleSoft report, if the Minister could also provide a quick one-pager, or whatever it takes, to identify any positions that are not funded in the main estimates.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, today, I want to talk about a program that is a very good program for the community, called the Community Access Program.

Mr. Speaker, that program at this point has about $1 million in it, and that's distributed to the communities. It seems like a small program, which it is a small program, but I found benefits to that program to be very big, actually. The benefits of being able to access gravel, as an example, is just one benefit that the Community Access Program, I found was something that was very positive for the community.

Some of the communities right...

Mr. Speaker, I seek unanimous consent to move item 11 up the orders of the day to now or number 4. Thank you.

Unanimous consent granted