Mr. Chairman, when I made my response, I did not mean at the end of June; I meant after this session here. During break, or whatever the term is going to be between this time and that time. So, we are not waiting until the June session, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman, is this the place to ask about the community alcohol and drug programs?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I have a specific question about the community alcohol and drug programs. I wrote the Minister several months ago about what I consider to be inequities in benefits for workers in treatment centres and workers in community programs.

I was very grateful when the department was able to improve the salaries for treatment centre workers by providing settlement allowance last year. But it has created an inequity, Mr. Chairman. I will cite my community for example. There are alcohol and drug treatment workers working in the Baffin treatment centre who have this benefit. There are alcohol and drug workers working in the community program, Upassuraakut, who don't have this benefit. So there is an inequity there.

I would like to ask if the Minister of the department is looking at addressing...I should say that I understand that there are limited funds, I fully understand this. But I understood that the community alcohol and drug programs were being evaluated and that there was perhaps going to be more attention paid to getting value for money, perhaps deciding where money is being well spent and where it is not being well spent.

I would hope that an evaluation of that kind would allow us to improve the benefits to employees in centres that are determined to be doing an important job. I guess I am suggesting, even if there isn't additional money, that it can be found through the evaluation of existing programs that I understand is under way. If we are going to do this job, we should either do it well or not do it at all. And there is a long-standing feeling that we are expecting people to do important work with obviously less pay and benefits than employees in other area.

The other inequity is if you have an employee working in the mental health counselling field for the Department of Health, in a public health centre or a community health centre, they are likely to be paid a lot more generously than these workers in community programs. I am sure the Minister understands the issue. I would appreciate a response. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, I believe that this specific question was brought up earlier. And we said that we would be dealing with the various drug and alcohol, and safe shelter benefits and the inequities in that, when the social envelope departments, including Municipal and Community Affairs, looked at the funding under the community action fund. It was agreed that there would be three priority areas to direct the community action fund and those are projects dealing with family violence, early intervention for children and families, and training for care givers. Hopefully we will be able to address those inequities through that fund, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Am I correct that the community alcohol and drug programs are being reviewed and evaluated with a view to ensuring that monies are well spent? Thank you.

Yes, Mr. Chairman, I believe that we are doing treatment centres and then looking at the community centres this year. As the Member is fully aware, some of these centres are a major force in the community. Others probably could be redesigned to work in another way and capture some of the specific community problems. So there is an evaluation of these projects to see whether we are spending money well and getting the benefit for the resources that are being expended. So that is being done. While we are doing that, it wouldn't make sense if a particular centre was assessed to be outdated for that community and we raised wages in that same community. It has to be done in conjunction and collaboration with what is being done and what the community's expectations are. Mr. Speaker, we are doing those two things that the Member has suggested are in need of being done. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. What is the time frame on the review and when will we hear the results? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, we are beginning this process right away, but we won't be able to do them all at once. So there will be three or four done in each region starting almost right away. We should be finished with all of them by the end of the fiscal year. However, we are trying to move as quickly as possible to be fair to the centres and to the people who are working at the centres. We will move as quickly as possible to deal with them. The evaluations will begin almost immediately. We have the framework for the evaluations and we will try to spread out the work across the Northwest Territories. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, I believe the number in that transfer is $3.2 million or $3.4 million. If you look at expenditures on drug and alcohol programs, community and regional treatment centres, we are probably spending about $9 million.