Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is the first department and we are dealing with one of the biggest budgets in government. It is a critical area that affects every man, woman and child in the Northwest Territories, and it is very clearly in a state of some distress.
Mr. Chairman, there is a sense, I know that in my constituency, and when you read the newspaper, listen to the radio and watch any kind of northern newscast, there are significant problems out there that this department has to face. There are a number of concerns, yet as we pointed out in our report, there seems to be a perpetual state of planning and study going on. The department goes from one high priced review to another, with no real long-term action to implement. I think there is a considerable amount of uncertainty in the department. There clearly seems to be significant friction in terms of the government side, administration side. Once again, we have chosen to bring into the North a southern contractor to give us the answers as to how to fix up the Department of Health and Social Services; how to make things better, how to get the system on track and functioning.
"Mr. Chairman, every dollar that we spend on consultant's workshops, meetings, travel and committees is another dollar that we take away from our health services. After all these studies, I think we know what we need and what we want to do. I know that we can work together to solve this problem and find a northern answer to this very northern challenge. I ask both sides of this House to do proactive work on this problem. I suggest that we start by using the data that we have already gathered and spend proposed funding for further studies on taking care of our people. Study time is over. It is time to get down to work. It is good to seek input from other people, but as leaders, I think that the people expect us to stop asking questions at some point and start answering them."
Mr. Chairman, that is a quote from Hansard, July 30, 1999, from Mrs. Groenewegen, the current Minister of Health and Social Services. I think it is as relevant today as it was back then, 18 short months ago when the debate was over the Med-Emerg Report and over the other studies that have been going on. Here we find ourselves still mired in significant problems.
Mr. Chairman, we have to somehow come to grips with the governance issues. As the Minister has pointed out, at least in my constituency and I think across the land if you look at her comments, the problem is not so much in many cases the clinical side or the service to the people, it is more the administration side, the ability of the department to work with the boards. Also, between the boards and the department to be able to count the money that is being spent, have the proper human resource practices.
It is doubly confounding when you look at education, for example. As we have indicated in our report, the divisional boards appear to have a fairly cooperative working, positive relationship with the Minister. The DECs all have surpluses. They do constructive planning together and they seem to get things done. When you look at the many municipalities, Fort Smith, Hay River, Inuvik, Yellowknife, and probably many of the smaller ones, the community councils, the community governments are able to run the programs, deliver services to all the people and do it in a proactive, constructive way. Yet year after year -- this is my fifth year at the table and probably going on my sixth budget -- we hear that and the problems seem to be exacerbated, that they are not near any conclusion.
I know and will acknowledge that there are things that drive the system; the doctor shortage, the nurse shortage. However, Mr. Chairman, clearly that is not where the fundamental structural problems exist.
We are taking all sorts of steps to bring professional people in and to keep nurses and doctors and social workers. What we cannot seem to get a handle on is how do we run administratively and from the government's point of view?
My concern is that the department sees the health boards as one of the sources of the problem. When you look at the Minister's statement to this House on Friday, February 16, 2001, there were six items listed. Five of them seem to clearly point to the problems with the health board. My question to the Minister has been where is the department in all this? These boards are the creatures in government. They are the creatures of the Department of Health and Social Services running under their many pieces of legislation.
When I look back to 1996, there was a unilateral, arbitrary decision made by Health and Social Services to turn over all the funding to health boards. It was basically done cold turkey. There was no clear audits done to say we the government are turning over the keys and the money to the health boards and here is how the numbers add up and here is the state of the union and the financial statement. Now from here on in, you folks administer it.
They just picked up the process and they picked up the money and the responsibility in mid-flow. I have been told repeatedly, at least in my constituency, that a lot of the problems that are being brought to light go back before the boards had the final authority and all the money to administer.
Mr. Chairman, I am hoping through the course of debate over the next day or two that we will get a clear sense that this is a shared responsibility, that we are not looking for a whipping boy. We are not looking for somebody to be the scapegoat. We are looking to provide a system that delivers high quality, stress-free health services and is not going to chew up and spit up the volunteers that sit on the health boards trying to do the job and that the people at the headquarters level, the people providing the leadership and overseeing the structure of this department and the very many pieces of legislation and policy that guide it can come to an agreement, an understanding of how they are going to do this. I for one am not particularly enamoured with the idea of re-centralizing, of putting all the pieces back in place and to disenfranchise and disempower boards.
The other concern I have tied in with this whole process and this big review that is going on, the Cuff review, is that there is no potential as far as I can see when I look at the terms of reference to look at other options like community service boards. I understand now that the government has pulled back from their review of regional administration and structure, but very clearly there is a relationship, what kind of regional structures you are going to have.
In my community, I think it is an option that should be looked at, the whole issue of a community services board. The South Slave, very clearly in my opinion, history has shown that regional operations do not do well, be they regional councils or divisional boards of education. Hay River has agitated long and hard for a number of years to pull out of the district education council, so it makes no sense to be looking at possibly trying to institute some kind of regional structure.
By the same token, I do not think it makes any sense just to possibly blow up the health boards and say that the problem is gone, now we will be able to do good work on behalf of the people of the Northwest Territories.
In my opinion, if everybody comes to the table, there is common ground here. I think communities are not going to give up and fight very hard to keep their hard-fought involvement and direction and control that they do have over health services at the community level. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.