Thank you, Mr. Dent. Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, we have a community wellness consultant for support to people in outside communities that would like to put forward initiatives under this funding allocation. The $160,000, just for clarification, does not flow to the boards. It actually goes out to community organizations or communities who have program ideas. Thank you.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the one thing I would say then is that since the boards are typically responsible for the nurses in the communities, I would hope the department would look at a way to examine what we are doing in community wellness or population health initiatives and make sure there is some way found to give the boards the means to better support nurses and CHRs to deliver population health programs in the communities. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. I did not hear a question there, just a comment. Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I have a question regarding recruitment and retention, specifically on the retention side of the strategy. $3.4 million last year, $3.4 million in this year's budget. Lapsed money last year, yet I have a constituent who is a nurse, a northern nurse, born and raised in the North, who has to meet the requirement to get her bachelor of science, as practicing RNs are going to have to do, yet the department tells her there is no money on the retention side of the strategy.

I do not understand the link to education, the education leave component and the funding. If the two are linked, if there is a big, holistic picture taken here, this has been identified as a critical initiative. Yet the department on one hand says there is no money. They lapse money. They create another program with $70,000. They create all these self-imposed bureaucratic barriers between the funding that was voted as a block. I would like to get some clarification from the Minister. Why is that the case? What can be done to address this issue? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I am not sure if the Member wants a detailed breakdown of the various line items under which the money was not spent and lapsed. I could provide that. I have seven different activities in which the money was not spent and the corresponding reasons for that. I am not sure if that is the information he wants. I think what the Member is asking for is why there is not more money available to northern nurses for education leave. Maybe the Member could clarify that for me. Thank you.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Minister is correct. The business plan would cover where the money was lapsed. I am interested in the broader issue of if we have nurses and we are lapsing money and these are programs that have been designed by the department, surely they must have the flexibility as well to adjust money and put it where it is needed. That is the question, yes.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, there was $80,000 allocated for education leave. We have gone over this a few times in the House, but the department did spend $125,000 on education leave. I want to restate that it is very important to us that nurses applying for education leave get it. However, once a commitment is made to an employee who is taking education leave, you cannot necessarily change the recipients mid-education. If it is a two-year commitment, then the money flows again to those same people, because it would be rather ridiculous to send them out to school for one year and then cut their funding.

Once a commitment is made, we continue to assist those employees. Because an employee is not successful in one particular fiscal year for education leave does not mean they will not get in the next year. The case Mr. Miltenberger keeps referring to was under the criteria, very highly ranked as a priority candidate for education leave. They may not get a positive response in the year they apply, but that does not mean they are not the top of the list and still highly qualified the next time funding becomes available. I hope the Member can appreciate that once a commitment is made to an employee for education leave, we follow through on that until they have completed that segment of their education.

As for allocating additional resources to education leave, this is something we have to give serious consideration to. As Members have indicated, we would be hoping that nurses with two year registered certification would be increasing their credentials to a bachelor's degree. This may have to be done over a period of time, because it is not always easy to fill those positions while those nurses are off on education leave. This needs to be done in a very organized and methodical manner.

If the employee decides to go on their own without pay and do their education leave on their own timeframe and cannot wait for the education leave funding to become available, there are numerous other sources of money to assist them in doing that. Thank you.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First, to be clear, I am not suggesting that somebody who has already been approved for education leave be given the hook and this other lady put in her place. What I am saying is that this time out you are asking for $3.4 million for retention of nurses. You are going to tell me that you have not really looked at this. You have the complete flexibility as a department to look at that money and put it where it is supposed to be in the retention side of this, not just the recruitment side. My question to the Minister is, will she give it serious consideration? Will she give it timely consideration? There is nothing that prevents the department from creating or adjusting these programs to meet the targeted goals that this Assembly is voting the money on, which is retention.

I would also like to ask, it was requested some weeks ago for some numbers, how many aboriginal and northern nurses have received education leave or are receiving education leave this year? I would like to know that as well, given the commitment to affirmative action, given the commitment to northern hire, and given the abysmal statistics that we as a government tend to have in these specialty areas. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There are five Department of Health and Social Services employees who are receiving education leave dollars at this time. As to the specifics of how many of them are aboriginal, I am not certain, but I do know that the criteria heavily weights priority one hires for acceptance in this when the applications are assessed. We can definitely get the information for the Member. Three of the five are aboriginal.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Could the Minister indicate the priority status of the other two individuals? Given the fact that the Minister has the latitude and that we are voting this money for recruitment and retention, why will the Minister not commit to looking at this in a timely way if there are local, northern nurses in place? As your recruitment and retention strategy states, one of your priorities is a stable workforce, a northern workforce. Why would you not look at putting some more money into that area? That is what we are voting for. That is what you are using it for and then you are saying, well, we only put $20,000 there and we cannot touch it any more, we cannot add any more, and it makes no sense to me when I look at this strategy with your goals.

You can quote it, what you want to do, the priority areas, the stable, northern workforce, supporting our own homegrown nurses and such. Yet you are telling me that you do not have the latitude. You cannot move the money around and you have lapsed money. That is what we are voting on this money for. That is why you are here asking for another $3.4 million. I am asking you why are you turning people away, northern nurses, aboriginal nurses, when they are so rare? I know we have already lost one out of our community because there were no arrangements made. She picked up the phone and got a job down south in a heartbeat. I cannot, at this point, see why we want to give you $3.4 million when the department is letting issues like this go unaddressed. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, there were 13 applicants for education leave for which there was no funding available. This year, the funding was already committed to the five who are on education leave. By the way, out of the five, three were priority one, two were long time Northerners, priority two hires.

The Member is suggesting that we move money. Is he suggesting that we find money for all 13 applicants for education leave or do we just deal in isolation with this particular constituent of his? It is difficult to address this concern in isolation on an ad hoc basis because other people also applied and we have to consider the issue of access and fairness. We are going to look at whether additional resources need to be committed for education leave. I have committed to look at that. For this particular fiscal year, the money is committed and there will not be a re-occurrence of this lapsed funding. There are numerous explanations for why this funding under recruitment-retention did lapse, and part of it was the timing under which we got the money and the ability to recruit people to fill some of the positions. There were a number of reasons. We have to look at the big picture. We cannot just look at one particular application in isolation. Let me say again that we are very committed to the intent of allowing aboriginal northern nurses, northern social workers, people who work in the health care field, to enhance their credentials and training through the education leave program. Thank you.

You did get asked a question, Mr. Miltenberger. A short one.

Thank you. You are not allowed to pose a rhetorical question, Mr. Chairman, for your astute chairmanship. The Minister did ask me a question of what I am suggesting. I am suggesting the $3.4 million in recruitment and retention. You have it carved up in so many small pots and little bits here and little bits there. You are sending people off on junkets to Ireland and the British Isles. I would suggest that we know we have a pool of northern nurses who need training. We should be earmarking some of that $3.4 million to address the backlog the same way we are asking the Department of Justice to address the backlog of legal family law issues. We are giving you money. I am asking you to use your ministerial discretion and not just hive it off into smaller pots that are unique and separate from each other. Thank you.

Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In regards to monitoring and evaluation, I wonder if the department has statistics, especially in regards to an area of concern that you see all across Canada, life expectancy of First Nations people versus the rest of the population. Does the department have such statistics, especially for the Northwest Territories? Also, if you have it, in regard to gender between men and women. In a lot of our communities, I notice there is a lot of elderly ladies, but not too many men that seem to pass on at an earlier age. I would like to ask the department, do you have such statistics and do you follow them so we can see exactly why there is such a variation between health expectancy in different cultural groups?