Mr. Chairman, I believe the department has allowed them to take some steps. Maybe if the Member wants, I will ask the Minister responsible for Health to elaborate on that.

Thank you, Mr. Handley. Mrs. Groenewegen.

I am sorry, what was the question?

Mr. Dent, would you like to clarify your question?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am concerned because this government is only covering half of the deficit from last year, knowing that the board had submitted their plan to the Minister in July, but no decision has been made to allow them to proceed with anything to deal with the deficit. Since they had a deficit of one million dollars or better last year, obviously that has continued until they get to make some changes. Are we going to let them run up another million dollar deficit and then next year only fund half of it again?

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We recognize that unless some of the recovery efficiencies can be put in place that yes, we continue to operate at the same level that caused the deficit last year. We recognize that. We want to be very cautious and proceed carefully on how we are going to address this, and we recognize the fact that until some of those things are put in place we continue to be faced with the same things.

As Mr. Handley said, we are hoping that the information we gather from the operational review will give us a better base from which to make the kinds of decisions that need to be made.

It was determined that for the amount of money that has been approved already, that these were unaddressed forced growth issues. There is also a budget planning exercise that goes on to address the needs for the following year which would build in those sorts of things because every board will have issues of forced growth.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Is this setting the standard? I know there were four boards in the Territories that ran deficits through to March 31, 2000. Is the intention to fund all of them just for the volume increases?

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Mrs. Groenewegen.

I am not really sure, Mr. Chairman, what the Member means by volume increases, but on all of the boards that ran deficits, operational reviews are being undertaken to differentiate between those things that were forced growth, unavoidable, unanticipated, those kinds of things go in one category. Other things which might be one-time costs due to certain circumstances, decisions that were made by the board, something that could have been, there could have been an efficiency and there was not, those kinds of things will be separated out. That will give us a better idea of what their budgets will need to look like to continue to operate in the future.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Mr. Dent.

Thank you. I am sorry that the Minister did not, I was just reading from the budget document when I said volume increases. Perhaps if I had said volume increases within patient care programs, that would have perhaps answered the question.

From what the Minister just said, does that mean that Stanton will not be funded for the increase that they negotiated with the emergency room physicians or with physicians for emergency room coverage?

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am not able to answer that level of detail. Now we are getting into the various components that contributed to the deficit. The Member is asking me to respond to that. We are looking at it in a comprehensive way. We have determined that these costs which have already been approved to be covered were things that were forced growth. I am not sure which category the emergency room coverage would fall into, whether that was considered forced growth or that was considered one-time costs based on the acute shortage of physicians we had at the time. Thank you.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have been waiting since July to get into that level of detail. Is there ever going to be a time in this House when we can get into that level of detail to talk about it? I thought we were going to have a meeting earlier today with the Minister and some members of the board to discuss what was happening. Unfortunately, that was apparently cancelled. When are we going to get into this level of detail? I think my constituents have a right to know what is happening and what changes are going to take place. If certain actions taken by the board are not going to be covered by this government, it is going to have an impact on patient care at that hospital. We need to talk about that. That is an expenditure of public funds. I thought that was what we were getting into when we talked about this portion of the deficit for that operation there.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Mr. Handley.

Thank you, Mr. Handley. Mr. Dent.

Mr. Chairman, I do not see how that is possible. If we are talking about a budget, we are talking about expenditures for next year. We are talking here about expenditures that were made last year. When are they going to be covered? When are we finally going to get to the point where we are discussing that?

This $552,000 is money that was spent last fiscal year, not this fiscal year. This is not part of a budget. This is part of a deficit that they ran and a recovery plan. That is why it is showing up in a supplementary appropriation. To say that it is going to be in the next budget, I find that hard to believe, that we are going to put in a budget two years down the road the money to cover a deficit.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yes, two things are going to take place. We are going to have a consultation framework established, because when the...first of all, the operational review will go some way toward helping out with this. The other thing, the level of detail Mr. Dent refers to that he would like to get into with this, we have to establish how the boards are going to undertake this consultation with MLAs, their communities, and with the recipients of the service.

I have a meeting with the board chairs on the 30th of November and we are going to talk about this. It is difficult if we come and discuss that level of detail first with MLAs before staff have been consulted and then the staff find out. It creates problems. We have already ran into some difficulties on the consultation and we are very aware that Members of the Legislative Assembly want to get involved in that level of detail and when we have come up with a suitable consolidation process, that will happen. Thank you.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. We are on page 9, primary and acute care programs, Mr. Miltenberger.