Robert Hawkins

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to thank Mr. Yakeleya for bringing forward this motion and also extend my appreciation for letting him allow me to work with him on this particular motion and seeing the development.

I believe that the best investment that this government can make in any program is education. We can put them in health and we can put them in wildlife programs, we can put them in business programs, but the absolute best programming that we can put our dollars in is a good, solid education that will enable the next generation coming behind with the knowledge and attitude to go...

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the Minister’s effort in trying to answer the question. But, really, other than meeting with them, it doesn’t sound as if anything’s really come of it. What’s stopping the Program Review Office, as a lead Minister as well as, of course, a departmental Minister where the Program Review Office sits, what’s stopping the Minister from launching the program review team on this type of initiative, engaging small business to ensure that we’re helping them fulfill their paper requirements by dealing with the red tape problem? Thank you.

The Minister almost said she would look into it. That is my question. Would the Minister confirm that if an authority is purchasing through Stanton, that they are not being charged a service fee, an administration fee or a mark-up fee? And feel free to find another like-minded semantic style of word to replace administration fee or service fee, but a fee is a fee in some form or another and I am curious, are they charging them just to help bulk purchasing or is there a hidden cost there somewhere that is being passed through to the authorities. If she would do some research and confirm that...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In my Member’s statement today I talked about the need to work through the red tape and perhaps even create a process that would deal with red tape. Not more red tape, of course.

I’d like to ask questions today to the Minister responsible for the Strategic Investment Committee on Refocusing Government. My first question to that Minister would be: what has this government done through its programming and efforts to reduce red tape for small business and can they cite a few examples? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The way this Minister and the previous governments have been managing the health system is supplementary appropriation. That is how they are managing the funding problem.

Mr. Speaker, the Minister seems to hearken quite clearly about you have to do zero-based budget review. She is the one who has a deputy minister who said they did this. So they should know on what positions cost and they should fund them properly. They should know what all of these items cost and fund them. That is the issue.

Mr. Speaker, how many unfunded positions are not accounted for? How many...

Well, Mr. Speaker, financially, it’s like the government wants to run this ship to the ground. I mean, 10 out of 11 budget years a deficit and we’re not even including the one that’s just past, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, with all this so-called review that they don’t care about how much money they spend, what has the management learned and done? In other words, what management and financial controls have been put into place to ensure that we have that so-called zero-based budget review that was done, that it was not money out the window and a waste of time? What are they doing to plug the leaks...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I would like to talk about the continued deficit at Stanton Hospital. Between the budget years of 1999 and 2000 to the budget year of 2009-2010, which is 11 budget cycles, Stanton has all but one fiscal year been in deficit. That is one year that they did not have a single deficit, Mr. Speaker. It is hard to imagine 11 budget cycles. From what I can tell, it was the one budget year that the Stanton board fired itself, oddly enough.

For 11 years, what have they been doing over there? Adding up each unbudgeted deficit year after year, Stanton has accumulated, if you...

She should be doing something, Mr. Speaker. What has she been doing?

Mr. Speaker, I have said many times that I believe Stanton is underfunded. I think a zero-based review would actually clear any air or question on that particular problem. The problem is everyone seems to know that there are problems but no one is doing anything about their problems. We hear about we have done a review. Now, we hear, out of the blue, a zero-based review is done through the years. We have no facts on the table where they have stopped the leakage. By the way, all it is is just an accumulation of protecting the process than it is about doing anything. Mr. Speaker, is Stanton or...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’ll have questions for the Minister of Health and Social Services regarding the Stanton deficit, which harkens back to my Member’s statement where I am significantly concerned that Stanton has missed 10 out of 11 budget years in the sense that they’ve found ways to create deficits without stopping them. Mr. Speaker, they need to be applauded for that one year that they let the board fire itself. It seemed they knew what was going on, because it showed that they weren’t in deficit that year, but they continue to accumulate with no one willing to stop it.

Mr. Speaker...