Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to ask this question to the Minister of Finance. With the discussion of all the vacancies and when they’re going to be filled and the amount of money we approve each year, for the last 10 years I’ve been standing here and I’m still standing here asking when will the communities without RCMP or nurses have those positions filled. Each year I bring that forward and there’s no money, there’s no money. Just recently we find out there are vacant positions and still there’s no money.
When will this government have the flexibility of letting this Cabinet say, listen, they’re asking for this in Colville Lake as well as any other small community without RCMP or nurses for 10 years that I’ve been here.
Can the Minister explain to me why Colville Lake or any other small communities do not have nurses yet or an RCMP? At last count it was 10 or 11 communities without RCMP members. When?
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The honourable Minister of Finance, Mr. Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’ll speak first, of course, to the fiscal reality that we face, which the Member is very conversant with and well aware of. I can also speak to the fact that there are health and safety issues for employees now. It’s no longer a case of one nurse or one RCMP, but it’s going to be two or maybe even three to cover off all of these health and safety issues, which gets back to being a significant cost factor.
We are trying to profile our resources to make sure that we provide coverage for health and social services and for the RCMP to provide that security and comfort to all members in all of the communities. But the request of actually stationing members in every community regardless of size is one that we’re not in a position to fulfill at this point. Thank you.
The Minister and I haven’t gone out for supper, but we’ve had a lot of discussions on this issue. I’m asking for a plan. In the last 10 years of being in this House and being a Member of the Legislative Assembly, when are we going to stop talking about a plan, given that we have a lot of vacancies? Let’s do one community this year, let’s do another community next year or the year after. We know from the previous Ministers and even this Cabinet, they tell us the amount of money to staff an RCMP officer or the nurse in the community.
I’m asking, when do we start the plan other than give reasons why we can’t do this? When can we have that discussion?
As it pertains to health and social services, I know that there has been, over the years, a lot of discussion, a lot of planning, a lot of creating of models of what would be an ideal staffing model in the communities for all health and social services programs and when we look at the actual numbers – and you’ve seen some of the requests that come through – they would bankrupt the government.
So every year we do business plans, every year we sit down with communities, we sit down with the departments and we go through the programs and services that are there, always within the fiscal context and we’re going to be starting that cycle again, in 54 days I believe the Member said, and we’ll be starting the work on our last budget of the 17th Legislative Assembly. Once again it will be an opportunity for us to gather around the table and look to the future as devolution will have been upon us and we will be looking forward, hopefully with a lot of hope for the future. Thank you.
The Minister has mentioned in the House the number of years, 19 years he’s been through this cycle and the number of years to get a project or to get something in in the regions or the communities. So, given that we’re close to the end of our term in this Assembly, could we look at one of the communities that does not have a nursing station, for example, or RCMP members in that community?
Imagine some communities do not have a nursing station, a position for a nurse or RCMP members in that community, and we’ve gone too long without the members living in our communities and this is our 10th year. So, certainly we could look at some of the flexibilities, given that we know now a little more information on the vacancies.
Can he be creative to look at some of these positions along with the capital infrastructure required to go into communities so people can have some of the essential, basic services and requirements that other communities take for granted? Thank you.
I can appreciate the Member’s concern and his patience and his resolute pursuit of this issue along with his other colleagues from small communities. What I would suggest, since he’s referred to and looking for hope potentially, in his mind, with the review of vacancies that the committee asked yesterday for some more detailed information and we are in the process of finalizing that information. But once that information is reviewed and we all have a common understanding of the breakdown of the numbers, which I think will meet the concern of the Members, then we can have a more informed discussion about those issues and the relationship to the issue that the Member has raised. I think we’ll see that there is not a huge fund or pot of positions that are sitting there that could be moved. Filling them is a challenge as it is, but we’ll be able to account for all of the different questions that the Members have raised when we review that information. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Yakeleya.
I appreciate the Minister’s willingness to have some continued dialogue on this and see where we can go with it. This has been achieved in some of our vision and goals that we set out in the 17th Assembly.
So I’m going to ask the Minister, given this, can the Minister provide some of the basic economic dollars as to the communities that do not have health centres or communities who do not have RCMP officers? What are we looking at in terms of the dollars that would be required, and have some discussion to see if we could at least move towards that direction?
As we sit here debating and considering the budget put forward by the government, the expenditures for the year are laid out. We’ve made an accommodation on the Heritage Fund. That will be included in this as we go forward. So we need to address that issue.
I would be happy to have further discussions with the Member in this venue or other venues of a more social nature where there may even be some food on the table to help promote discussion. But, very clearly, I anticipate that we will be continuing this discussion once we conclude the debate on this current budget.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The Member for Nahendeh, Mr. Menicoche.
