Mr. Speaker, the Minister says that his research and analysis for coming forward with this 70 to seven regional super board model came from watching the Tlicho model over the last 10 years. Mr. Speaker, with all due respect to the Tlicho people and some of the wonderful things they have done in that constituency, surely the Minister would recognize the fact that the Tlicho Community Services Board serves one group of people, the majority by far from one nation, who speak the same language, who have one large central community and three outlying smaller communities. How did he think we were going to transpose that to a region like Yellowknife finds itself in or Hay River finds itself in? How were we going to overcome those differences? I mean, was no thought given to the fact that the Tlicho region is actually extremely unique in terms of its makeup? How could he think you could transpose that model to these other extremely diverse regions? Thank you.
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The lead Minister for refocusing government, the Honourable Michael Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This model, the Tlicho model, is not one that’s necessarily one that’s based on ethnicity or having homogeneousness to the population. We recognize that there are unique characteristics in every region. What we’re talking about is a governance structure that has applicability. We believe, where we currently have regional boards of governance now in every region, either one or two, dealing with education and health, we believe that we could integrate the current...use the current board structure, expand the scope and integrate the program delivery oversight into that structure, that we believe with the appropriate policy reviews and legislation changes would lead to a more effective delivery of programs, streamlining the governance admin allowing us better case management. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, part of this approach has also been premised on the theory that it’s kind of a one-stop window for people who come in contact with government through their need for housing, education or health. You know that basically we’re serving those three agencies, or those three departments are serving the same clients. Mr. Speaker, I think that is another ill-conceived premise. I would like to know from the analysis that the Minister and his committee has done how many people are actually in that category. Because you know, for myself, I don’t have a housing issue, I don’t have an education issue, I don’t even have any kids in school anymore, and for now, I don’t have any health issues. So how was this idea that somehow we were going to have this consolidated approach to all these constituents? How many constituents in the Northwest Territories do each of those departments deal with collectively? Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, I would suggest that the clientele for housing, education and health are very common. We have small communities where, for example, the predominant form of accommodation in the smaller communities is housing. We know -- I know from personal experience, having worked in Health and Social Services -- that when there are health issues or social service issues there tends to be a related housing issue. If there are troubles in school, if there’s not enough food on the table, if there’s alcohol abuse in the home, if there’s FASD, that these services link. Our intent was to be able to have that case management facilitated to a greater degree than it is currently, where we would have a structure that would encourage social workers and the housing people and the educators to be able to come around the table to try to sort out issues, pool their resources, avoid duplication and those type of areas.
Anybody that has been blessed with good health should be very grateful and I hope that the Member continues to be healthy. There are many, many people in our jurisdictions that struggle. Thank you.
Thank you and I really appreciate the Minister’s well wishes towards me.
Going back to the issue of analysis and how we’re going forward with this, the issue of changing legislation, all of our boards and agencies in the Northwest Territories are creatures of our legislation. We’ve had a piece of legislation we’ve been trying to get to -- the Wildlife Management Act -- for 10 years. We don’t have the people to write the legislation; we don’t have the workforce to...I’m just wondering what kind of analysis went into what the cost would be to put in place changes to existing legislation, overarching legislation, which would then see these new structures operate within that legislation. What’s the costing on something like that? Thank you.
We shared with the Members and we put on the executive website the work plan over the next seven weeks. The work that’s currently underway, a lot of it is going to bring us those figures; the modeling costs, the transition costs, the potential implementation costs, some of the human resource issues. We’ll look at it at that point. Those are legitimate issues that we have to look at and intend to address moving forward. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Final supplementary, Mrs. Groenewegen.
So all of the preliminary analysis was based on one model and all of the serious analysis that we’re asking about is going to happen in the next seven weeks. Mr. Speaker, I have to ask this Minister why would you launch a plan or a model or a scenario with none of that stuff having been done? This whole initiative should be dubbed failure to launch, because, yet again, another ill-conceived, ill-prepared idea thrown out there into the public. Why wasn’t the research done in advance before putting this out? Thank you.
---Applause
Mr. Speaker, there has been about a decade or so of work: Strength at Two Levels; the Cuff report; the Deloitte Touche report on governance, on boards; the work done by the Boards and Agencies committee; the recommendations for a whole host of different approaches to how we deliver services in the regions. We looked at all that. All that was there. It’s all documented. There are hundreds of thousands of dollars going back to the last century with the Minister of the time -- I believe it was Minister Ng -- started with a $400,000 report. Over the last 10 years I would suggest we probably spent a couple million dollars studying this issue. We’ve looked at all that. We’ve looked at things like experiences that people have had in the business. We’ve looked at the Tlicho model and we made some decisions to move forward. There is no easy way to do this type of process that’s going to cause restructuring, that’s going to change the status quo when it involves so many boards and so many people. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The honourable Member for Nunakput, Mr. Jacobson.
