Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We are anticipating a definition of desired roles, responsibilities and authorities of each body, the identification of changes possible within existing directions by Cabinet and FMB, the identification of existing statutory and other barriers to desired changes, development of a process for future efforts and the priorization of areas for consideration. Yes, we want to mark turf out. The boards are wanting to mark their turf as well.
The difficulty that I have, at times, Mr. Chairman, is that, ultimately, the people of the Northwest Territories collectively, the Government of the Northwest Territories, on behalf of those people, pay the bill. If you have a board that goes out and does something that it believes it should do and it just says, well, send the bill to the Government of the Northwest Territories. In many instances, we are delivering the program on behalf of the federal government, who will only pay for "x" amount of procedures or "x" amount of days for a certain number of people and for a certain number of times per year for a procedure. That is where the difficulty comes in. If you are going to do the paying, you want to say what it is being spent on.
I think that our concern is not the delivery of health in the regions. I think the boards are doing an excellent job in delivering. We get some complaints, but I want to be able to say to Members, when there are complaints about health in a particular region, go and see the health board. Don't ask me any more because we have an agreement that that is their balywig. At the same time, I want to be able to try and encourage the boards to be responsible with the funds that they are spending and have them spend them in an economical way, and to take into consideration that they are in this together. There is only one pot of money and there is only one person paying and that is the taxpayer, and to be cognizant of that.
I believed, at times, that health boards have used the health system as a means of, in some instances, economic benefit to communities. I don't think we can look at health that way. I think we have to look at health as delivering to the people of the Northwest Territories a health care system that addresses their needs and ailments and, at the same time, it is done in a reasonably responsible fashion by spending as few pennies as possible. Mr. Patterson is right. It is a question of turf. That is the issue that we have to stake out with the boards. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.