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, during Stanton’s zero-based review, as highlighted by the deputy minister, what inefficiencies were discovered, what did they do about it, and certainly, what did it cost? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The honourable Minister of Health and Social Services, Ms. Lee.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Before I answer that question, I just wanted to comment that the Member mentioned something about that the administration is denying or somehow hiding the deficit. I want everybody to know that we do regular reporting of the deficit situation of the entire structure. Every three months Members get briefed regularly about the deficit situation, so nobody is denying anything about the deficit situation.
Secondly, Mr. Speaker, while I believe it’s important for us to have important discussions here, it is important for us not to be abusive towards the staff. Mr. Speaker, we have the A-Team at Stanton, with the CEO and the medical director and everybody who works really hard to keep one of the most important institutions, the territorial health care system, afloat. While I’m paid to take abuse, I would ask the Member to refrain from… I have to tell you, every time I go to FPT all of the Atlantic Ministers keep asking when are we going to send the CEO back to Atlantic Canada, because they want her back. We are lucky to have her.
Mr. Speaker, the administration is well aware of how much it costs to deliver the services they are delivering. Over the years, as the Member knows, we have put in cash infusions to clear the deficit. But we all understand, and the management understands, that that is not a way to go. We need to figure out what services we need to deliver at Stanton and what should not be, and how do we do things better so that we get to the cause of it before we put the, you know… So the focus is not getting to the black, but the focus is about knowing what Stanton should deliver and making sure that we do it well. Thank you.
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.
There are no leaks in the hospital. The hospital is the only territorial acute care hospital in the Territory. They deliver services that have deficit inherently built into them, such as medical travel. One of the options we are looking at is to transfer out of that. The medical directors and the CEO are looking at finding efficiencies with the specialist delivery. We are understanding that the deficit at Stanton is not just a Stanton deficit. Stanton takes on a lot of work that is attributable to other authorities.
As I’ve said for the last four days in the budget review, Mr. Speaker, we are looking at it as a system. The deficit at Stanton and Beaufort-Delta are not Stanton and Beaufort-Delta deficits, it is a system deficit; and for us to address those deficit situations, we need to change the entire system. The Foundation for Change is doing that. We are looking at the physician model, we are reviewing the medical travel and we are reviewing the mental health and addictions service. We have also made item-by-item cases for some of the underfunded programming at Stanton. I am very proud of the hard work that the management and the CEO are doing. We need to make very well-considered, methodical and long-term view changes to the system. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
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 is the Minister’s office approving or rewarding overspending and ineffective budgeting? That is what it looks like over the last 10 years. We are going into 11 years this year. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, I have said on many occasions that we believe, yes, all of our authorities are not necessarily under right budget. We are working toward right budget for all of the authorities. You can’t be looking at Stanton and Beau-Del separately, Mr. Speaker. The Member has said that we all know that Stanton is underfunded and if you do a zero-based review, you will know. I have to disagree with the Member on both accounts. We do not necessarily know. You can’t just make a statement that Stanton is underfunded, and a zero-based review would only tell you how much money you are spending to do things that you are doing the way you are doing it now.
We know exactly how much it costs to operate the programs and services we do at Stanton. What we are trying to do is we want to move programs around so that if there are things that could be done in other places, if things can be done more efficiently, we would like to do them outside of the hospital. We want to keep the hospital being the most acute care facility that it should be. We want to make sure that all of the doctors, nurses and everybody that works there are doing exactly what they should be doing and not anything more and that they get exactly the right budget. I have had new management there for a year and a half and we have been working really hard on that. We are making progress. This is not something that you could fix in one day just by saying, okay, they are underfunded, let’s give them $10 million and we don’t want to know why. That is not the way I would like to manage the health care system. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Lee. Final supplementary, Mr. Hawkins.
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 physician costs are we paying for the region that should be the regional costs, not Stanton’s costs? That is the type of mismanagement. Allowing this to happen is allowing Stanton to have a reputation of mismanagement and this Minister is letting them be saddled by that, which could be cleaned up as job one. She has been here 12 years. There should be no surprise. It’s not like it just showed up today. Thank you. She should be doing something about this particular issue.
Do you have a question, Mr. Hawkins?
She should be doing something, Mr. Speaker. What has she been doing?
The honourable Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.
