Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. When the Minister was in my riding and we met with the Dehcho Health Board and the Dehcho Divisional Education Board he indicated that the Alberta government model was that they had merged boards as well. In that case they merged the health boards with health boards and education boards with education boards. And albeit too, it wasn’t very effective. I’d also like to ask, prior to this model were there any other models that the Minister or their committee had looked at before rolling out this package?
Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. I didn’t hear any question, but I’ll go to the Minister for refocusing government, Mr. Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We, as I indicated, looked at territorial boards. We didn’t see great value to that in our style of government. We, of course, looked at the status quo and then we looked at the regional service model as has been put in place in the Tlicho.
I concur that at the beginning of this Assembly we all sat down and indicated that a review of the boards and agencies was important. But I still don’t understand how we can merge a health and social services board with an education board. To me and to people who work inside those organizations, it doesn’t make sense. I’d like to know the reasoning behind that decision to put forth this model.
There were case management issues, there were efficiencies through administration and finance we believe are there and are the two key areas that we think would allow us to rationalize that. It would hopefully in the long term allow us to put more money into programs and tie up as little as possible on the administration and finance and policy sides.
You can make the same argument to propose a merge of the Workers’ Compensation Board with the Power Corporation Board, but it just doesn’t fit. I’d like to ask again how they can make an assessment and think there’s a fit here.
We’ve indicated that this is, what we came forward with was an initial concept. We recognize that there are lots of questions to be answered. The timeline was up to 2010-2011. This April is a milestone date to look at the work that we’ve done on the particular approach. Is that going to be the way forward? If there are going to be adjustments, what are they? Those are the questions and debate and discussion we were looking to have in April with the Members.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The honourable Member for Hay River South, Mrs. Groenewegen.
