Thank you, Mr. Chairman. With respect to the Member's concern about the apparent difference in the way that the Department of Health and Social Services reported the forced growth numbers, what I would like to say about that is for the first four months of the year, it is impossible for the department to operate without additional funding for forced growth components of our programs and services. He is right, there is a projected forced growth requirement that will be expended over the remaining nine months of the fiscal year.
I cannot speak to how this differs from the way other departments did it; however, I do feel that our department did comply with the parameters that were set out by the Financial Management Board in this regard. As for the undedicated capital, as members of the committee are aware, there are a number of aging facilities and infrastructures relating to health and social services, and there is being undertaken, as we speak, a functional review of these facilities to see which community and which facility may need renovation or replacement.
Usually, there is lead time and lead money required to plan for those activities. This is why this $200,000 is in here and most certainly it will be used for planning and design. It just has not been decided yet which community and which facility will have the highest priority for those dollars. I guess whether or not it will be used in the four months of this interim appropriation, perhaps when I am finished Mr. St. Germaine can speak to that. I thought it was prudent planning on the part of the department to foresee the fact that there will be a capital replacement of a facility once we deal with the business plans and the main estimates.
The Territorial Treatment Centre renovation is very much a similar explanation. We have been on the edge, thinking we may have a solution to some alternative programming here, but there are some realities in terms of nailing that down, which has taken longer than anticipated. We continue to work on that.
The Digital Communications Network and how that relates to the department's ability to participate in Telehealth is a very complicated and technical explanation, and I am afraid that I would not be able to provide that to the Member. I do believe that the Digital Communications Network was put in place, as the Member indicated, four years ago with very good intentions. If it is not working, that definitely needs to be examined and looked at. I could not tell you all of the reasons why that is not performing the way it should at this point in time. With that, I will ask Mr. St. Germaine if he would respond on that fourth item, the Digital Communications Network. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.