Mr. Chairman, with this motion we are very clearly saying that greater authority should be transferred to regional health boards. Those regional health boards should be the ones who determine what sorts of responsibilities they take on. We're not saying here that it should be determined by anyone else.
When we were talking with health boards, we did find some that told us that they were at different stages of development and that they recognized there were going to be steps they were going to have to take to achieve the same sorts of responsibilities that other boards had. There is a difference, Mr. Chairman, between responsibility and authority. We see that the boards should have the authority to determine what level of responsibility they are taking on. I think we have to recognize that this motion is talking about authority.
What we are saying is that boards should be empowered to make decisions about what they are willing and able to take on. The more they are willing and able to take on, the greater the responsibilities they have. A couple of the boards did tell us, for instance, that they didn't feel they were ready to take on full responsibility.
What we are trying to do is accommodate that situation here. As Mr. Zoe has pointed out, we don't even have a board in operation in the Deh Cho region. The committee has recommended that there be a board there. To say that this should happen arbitrarily, that all responsibility should be transferred on, would be a little bit ahead of the fact. The board needs to be there to have the authority in order to take on the responsibility. So we are trying to say, let's give the local residents the authority to determine how their services are delivered. That is really what this motion says.