Thank you, Mr. Steen. Mr. Ramsden.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsden. Mr. Steen.

Thank you, Madam Chairperson. Obviously, it would be beneficial to a particular Member to have copies of this transfer agreement, so that we know who is responsible for what. I only found out, for instance, the hamlet of Tuktoyaktuk has the most, whereby they are requesting a transfer of health and social services to the hamlet, but that is all I know. I do not know what the public knows either about what is involved in the transfer agreements, for instance, who is going to be totally responsible for health. Will it be the hamlet, the boards or the

department? After awhile my concern would be, not so much at this point in time, what the department is willing to transfer, but my concern is more to the affect that we do not seem to have it straightened out at the regional board level as to how to address all of the problems and concerns we are talking about transferring services down further to the smaller communities. I am not sure whether this will create more problems than we already have in this point of time. This is why I am asking questions as to whether or not there is, for instance, a time line, on a trial basis we would transfer something and then review the agreement or the transfer after six months or a year to see how effective it is. I have concerns even with that because it seems when a department transfers something, they never take it back no matter how bad it is doing. I have problems with that too. The other concern I have is, every time we transfer something, we transfer less money than we would have used to do it ourselves. There again, I have a concern in that we are going to transfer responsibilities to the communities without sufficient funding. We are almost dooming them to failure.

Thank you, Mr. Steen. Mr. Ramsden.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsden. Mr. Steen, it is ten minutes. I have to apologize to Mr. Krutko, when I recognized Mr. Barnabas before your ten minutes was up. I thought Mr. Barnabas had a motion to report progress or something and I recognized him out of order. Did you have anything further, Mr. Krutko?

Definitely, yes. Thank you, Madam Chairperson. In regard to the community wellness programs in the communities where there are real efforts made by different community agencies to work together to try to find some mechanism, so they can consolidate all their ideas and needs, whether it is dealing with early childhood development, mental health or addictions. It is to the advantage of the community to formulate all their efforts into trying to find a central location to streamline their activities, especially where you have competing interests, as the aboriginal organizations, alcohol and drug treatment facilities, municipalities, the police and the health centres. In regard to community efforts that were mentioned by Mr. Steen and other Members, this is the only way a lot of these communities are able to carry out these activities is by putting all of their money in a pot and hopefully being able to have enough to carry out one good idea because of the limited resources they have. Often, because of having them be approved by the regional committee. They feel that on one hand you are giving them the authority to make a decision, then on the other hand there is really someone else at the regional level making the decision for you. I mentioned earlier that the whole idea of communities passing motions and petitions, that it is the way they try and express themselves in how they see dealing with the problems in their community, which they have to deal with day in and day out. I would like to ask the Minister, why could the communities not make the decision in regard to how those monies are going to be spent on their own without having to go to a regional community?

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Mr. Ng.

Thank you, Mr. Ng. Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Madam Chairperson. If that is possible, what will it take for the community to have the authority to make the decisions on their own and override their regional council? Will that take a direction from yourself, as Minister, or a change of policy or what?

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Mr. Ng.

Thank you, Mr. Ng. Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Madam Chairperson. The reason why I raised the concern is, the Tl'oondih Healing Society in which they have made foreign attempts where they develop proposals in regard to how they can use and develop these resources to develop workshops and what not for the community. To be able to deal with the different concerns in regard to alcoholism, mental health and develop a scenario, so people can deal with their emotions and problems in the community. Basically, out of four tries they finally got an approval for this last program which is going to be happening in the next two weeks. It is a three-week program which the community has been asking for, but out of that proposal they made four attempts to get one approval for a proposal. A lot of time and effort are put into developing these proposals at the community level and then submitting it to the board. I would like, what I am hearing from the Minister is to ensure that communities will have the ability to make decisions on different reports or workshops they would like to hold in the communities. I would like to ask the Minister, how soon can his department publicly make a statement to that affect that the communities will be able to do that?

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Mr. Ng.

Thank you, Mr. Ng. Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Madam Chairperson. It seems like there is always funding in this government, I know they call it mad funding, where once February/March comes around at the end of the year everybody goes crazy trying to spend the money because they do not want to carry over any surplus. That is when they finally decide to approve these proposals. In this case, the communities have to deal with these programs and problems every day of the month and every month of the year. These problems in the communities are always there. You always find yourself reacting to an instance where someone might have committed suicide or died a violent death. It affects not only the families but the whole community. They deal with these efforts in regard to instances that happen where they seem like they are more in relation to reacting to issues than trying to find solutions to deal with these matters before they happen. There has to be more effort made to allow the communities to carry out their community-based health programs, deliver and administer them on their own. I thought this whole idea of community empowerment, that is what it is about, not allowing some regional board or agency out of Yellowknife when you are going to get your money and how you are going to spend it. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Mr. Ng.

Thank you, Mr. Ng. Community health programs, operations and maintenance, total operations and maintenance, $27.437 million. Mr. Steen.

Thank you, Madam Chairperson. I am going to ask some more questions on this community health and social services transfer. I would like to know what exactly the authority would be transferred to the hamlets. I do not understand what would be involved, setting hours for the nursing station. What exactly would the hamlets have authority over?