Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have a question for the Minister of Health and Social Services about his Member’s statement today.
Obviously, my statement today was about Hay River and how special it is, but it is also special in this process of the one territorial board or one management board for health and social services. Hay River is an anomaly. The employees are not territorial employees.
Has the Minister come up with a solution to put these employees into the territorial system? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. Minister of Health, Mr. Abernethy.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. When I was in Hay River earlier this summer, talking about board reform and the governance changes that we are proposing, I did meet with the public and one of the things that came up on regular basis is recognizing that Hay River is outside the public service and how do we bring them in. We are working on that right now. We are quantifying what the cost might be to bring them over into the public service and what other actions may be necessary. Once we have that information, we will be in a better position to figure out what our next steps will be and how and if we can bring those individuals into the public service.
There will certainly be a cost, so we are working on that, and once we have a little bit more information around that, I am absolutely happy to share that with the Member and committee. Thank you.
As the Minister indicated, he was in Hay River a few months ago talking about the same situation. At that time they were going to get us a cost of what it will cost to put these people into the public service.
When can we expect that cost and why is it taking so long? Thank you.
We have to work with the authority; we have to work with their pension provider to figure out what the actual full cost of that is. We didn’t start doing it immediately in the summer. We wanted to move along a couple more steps to make sure that there was any interest in us moving forward to the one authority. If there was no interest, obviously doing that work wouldn’t have been necessary. So there is an interest; we are starting to move forward with the action and the steps necessary to make this happen and we are in the process of quantifying what those costs will be. As I indicated, as soon as we have that, we will be sharing that with the Member and Committee. Thank you.
I know the Minister indicated to Mr. Bromley, talked to him about purchasing and some of the efficiencies there and I guess there was some real concern at the Hay River meeting that that meant Yellowknife purchasing of all goods. I am just wondering if the Minister can alleviate those concerns that Hay River had about a centralized purchasing and the fact that we do a lot of our own purchasing through our own authority right now and how that would work. Thank you.
When I was in Hay River, the concerns I heard were: is this centralization, what about bringing our people in from Hay River into the public service, and the other one was the board and how would we get back to a board or council for Hay River representation. Absolutely, this is not centralization. Even if we work together and partnership purchase to get economies of scale, we are still going to need the individual in the Hay River for Health and Social Services Authority or the regional hospital to coordinate the purchase of the supplies they need. We will still need those individuals at the front line, in the communities, identifying what is needed and ordering the specifics. How we order and who we order from will be done in cooperation. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Bouchard.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Minister just talked about the regional wellness councils and the advisory board.
Could the Minister give me a little bit of detail how that would work in the Hay River area and surrounding area, and will that board replace the public administrator that we currently have? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, one of the things that has become incredibly clear as I travel around the Northwest Territories talking about these wellness councils, is that in each of the catchment areas, for lack of a better term, like the Beaufort-Delta or Inuvik or the Sahtu, the way that the particular council will be formed will be definitely tailored to the particular area. In Hay River, as an example, we will obviously have to work with the Hay River town council as well as the other areas that might use Hay River as a catchment area to come up with a reasonable approach to selecting the individuals. Once the individuals are put on the council, once the council is established, there will no longer be a need for a public administrator because the council will have that responsibility. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. The Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.
