Thank you. The Aboriginal Advisory Committee and the Employability Committee, have they had a chance to develop or, I should say, seek out responses from employees to ensure that the employer, which is obviously the Government of the Northwest Territories, is certainly meeting the needs of a diverse and sensitive culture that we’re trying to build in our government? Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the answer from the Minister, the willingness to pursue something new and different. Mr. Speaker, does the Minister see a problem in the existing state of affairs where seniors’ issues are spread out throughout the government without a clear mandate or a coordinating role, and that being said, a Minister directly responsible for seniors and elders program? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In my Member’s statement today I talked about the need for an NWT charter for seniors. I think we could develop something that brings clear focus to your beliefs and principles on caring for seniors and elders. If you look across the government, there is no clear coordinating role. The Minister responsible for Seniors is title alone. There is no direct mandate to seniors and certainly as the Minister responsible for Seniors, they have no specific money targeted in order to help and support seniors.

Mr. Speaker, I think that’s a sad state of affairs, and I certainly hope...

Mr. Chairman. Perhaps the more efficient way of doing it is making it a part of our service level agreements we’ve cast in...(inaudible)...some type of compromised negotiation in having the agencies that we actually negotiate directly with. In other words, the Department of Health directly negotiates and draws up service level agreements with certain groups. Why don’t we have them have these groups phone people as part of the Aftercare Program on a contiguous basis of some manner to make sure people are on track with their programming? Would it not serve some interest in everyone’s efforts, be...

What’s stopping the department from making it part of the programming dollars we supply to various service agencies that provide addictions treatment and support for obligating them as part of the service agreement to provide an aftercare phone line for people to talk about, perhaps, the strains of fighting their addictions? If it’s good enough for Poundmaker outside of Edmonton to have a follow-up line where they actually do follow-up calls and whatnot to ensure the clientele have gone through their program so that they know they’re still supported outside once they’ve finished the program...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Recently I have inquired with the Department of Health and Social Services to follow up on some costing and focus on what we do for the Quitline and that would, of course, be people who have quit smoking. As many of us know, I guess it is a cessation phone line you call to speak about your woes of smoking cigarettes. I haven’t called it myself so I don’t specifically know, but I believe it’s set up in that context.

As I’ve learned from the Department of Health and Social Services, the response from the Minister, I believe $24,000 has gone to radio advertising and there...

It comes as no surprise of the Minister that I worry constantly about ensuring that there are fair opportunities for everyone in this regard, both Aboriginal and the disabilities community, and I’ve raised my concerns ensuring that the disabilities community certainly gets a good foothold.

With our government having, I believe, about a 0.5 percent representation, what type of awareness campaign, be it both seeking out further Aboriginal candidates for senior management positions or in the same type of gain for people with disabilities to ensure or reach out and show that this government wants...

Mr. Chairman, I guess by and large the concern from a number of constituents is that once the rally cry was heard and government decided to respond in what I would define as a favourable way, the public that spoke to me is the concern that they have disappeared on this particular issue and they are worried about what government may be fine tuning without sort of a public progress report of some sort. It is great that the Minister is speaking to the standing committee. I am aware of that, but from a public point of view, it is kind of scary to know that the government is taking care of you. It...

I would ask if the Minister could clarify that officially, because I think the last time I spoke to the deputy it was the reverse problem, which is the FMB’s authority -- to make sure it’s very clear -- restricts the use of those allocations in any other form but in the prescribed form.

Setting that aside with very little time left on the clock, I’ve raised, oddly enough in the same sort of circumstance, a timing that is raised with the deputy minister about what work is being done of rolling in physician costs into the departmental costs. One of the problems I’ve noticed is juggling those...

I don’t think that actually answered the question, which is I thought the policy restricted physician money being reallocated to, for example, NP money. So in other words, I can understand the FMB policy to ensure that if you didn’t hire a physician, you don’t run out and buy a whole whack of new laptops and photocopiers and fancy pens and whatnot. That would be a poor use of human resource money that’s meant for a job related to human resource function in that regard.

I understood it as the FMB policy did not allow you to reallocate to do the same type of similar service, if I may describe it...