Mr. Speaker, I do not think we can say with any certainty that any revenue that we generate will be clawed back by the federal government on the next formula financing agreement because what that agreement looks like and what will be clawed back and what we will get for tax adjustment effort and so on is going to be dependent on our success in negotiation that next formula financing agreement. I am going to do everything I can to ensure that the next formula financing agreement looks quite a bit different than the one we have now.

I do not think as Northerners we are getting the benefit we should be from the formula financing agreement. We need a better deal. We need to have resource revenue sharing and I hope to have some progress made in those things.

I would not want to make the assumption that any of these things we are doing now are going to be clawed back in the future because we are going to do our darnedest to make sure that they are not. If, for some reason, we are not successful and the federal government has determined that they are going to claw back on a highway toll, then we have to really reconsider whether we wanted to continue with that sort of mechanism or whether we would just drop it and say it is not worth it if all we are going to get back is 20 percent or something of the revenue that is generated. It is a bit hypothetical. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister Handley. Final supplementary, Mr. Bell.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The public certainly had reservations about where the hotel tax money might have been spent. I am wondering why the Minister did not consider setting up a trust in order to guarantee the public that the money would in fact be spent on tourism?

Thank you, Mr. Bell. The honourable Minister responsible for the Department of Finance, Mr. Handley.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the Member's suggestion-recommendation, advice. Yes, I will certainly take that under consideration as we implement the hotel tax. I really appreciate having Mr. Bell's support on this one. Thank you.

-- Applause

Thank you, Minister Handley. The time allocated for question period has expired. I would like to take this opportunity before the next item to welcome to the visitor's gallery, visitors from northern Saskatchewan, from the Athabasca Denesuline representatives. We have the vice-chief from Prince Albert Grand Council, Ed Benoanie; Jimmy Laban from Black Lake, councillor; August Mercredi, councillor from Fond du Lac; Flora Natomagan, negotiator from Hatchet Lake; Kevin Mercredi, negotiator from Fond du Lac; David Knoll, legal counsel, Prince Albert Grand Council; and, Peter Brook, management consultant for Prince Albert Grand Council. I take this opportunity to welcome you to the Northwest Territories Legislative Assembly.

-- Applause

I do apologize for the pronunciation of your name, but you can read the Hansard. It will be spelled correctly there.

Next item, item 7, written questions. Item 8, returns to written questions. Item 9, replies to opening address. Item 10, replies to budget address. Item 11, petitions. Item 12, reports of standing and special committees. Item 13, reports of committees on the review of bills. Item 14, tabling of documents. The honourable Member for Mackenzie Delta, Mr. Krutko.

Thank you. Item 14, tabling of documents. Item 15, notices of motions. Item 16, notices of motion for first reading of bills. Item 17, motions. Item 18, first reading of bills. Item 19, second reading of bills. Item 20, consideration in committee of the whole of bills and other matters: Bill 19, Committee Reports 5-14(3), 6-14(3) and 7-14(3), with Mr. Krutko in the chair.

Welcome to committee of the whole. We are dealing with Bill 19 and dealing with the Department of Health and Social Services. What is the wish of the committee? Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I would recommend the committee continue consideration of Bill 19 and Committee Reports 5-14(3), 6-14(3) and 7-14(3) concurrently. Specifically, our consideration of Health and Social Services, perhaps followed by Transportation.

Does the committee agree? Okay. We will take a short break and begin with the Minister responsible for Health and Social Services.

-- Break

I will call the committee back to order. Would the Minister like to call in any witnesses? Minister Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yes, I would like to bring witnesses.

Does the committee agree that the Minister brings in her witnesses?

Sergeant-at-Arms, could you escort the witnesses in? Madam Minister, could you introduce your witnesses for the record?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, today I have Ms. Penny Ballantyne, deputy minister responsible for Health and Social Services and Mr. Warren St. Germaine, the director of financial and management services. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Minister. Welcome, witnesses. Before concluding yesterday, there were several questions asked by Mr. Miltenberger. At that time, I stated to the Minister that when we continue on today, she will be replying to those questions. At this time, I would like to ask the Minister if she can reply to Mr. Miltenberger's questions.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Miltenberger raised quite a number of issues in his general comments just before the committee adjourned yesterday. A lot of the questions that Mr. Miltenberger outlined in his comments, I was struck by the resemblance of the questions to the terms of reference for the Cuff review. In fact, he touched on quite a number of the areas that are being looked at and we presented to the Cuff team in terms of the things we want them to look into.

With response to the working relationship between the boards and the department, I just wanted to outline to Members a few of the initiatives that the department and the boards have undertaken to ensure that there is a strong relationship between the department and the boards. One is the Joint Leadership Council. This is a face-to-face meeting quarterly between the board chairs and myself as the Minister.

This is a recently created meeting and council and we do talk about recommendations on system-wide planning and we share information and discuss issues that are relevant to the boards. We try to ensure that the planning processes at the leadership level and senior management level are linked.

In addition to that, we also have a joint senior management council. Again, this is a face-to-face meeting between the CEOs and senior management within my department. This particular council has been in place for the past two years. The purpose of this council is to share information of relevance to the whole health and social services system, make decisions on operational issues, conduct joint system-wide strategic planning and establish new joint board-department advisory committees and receive regular reports from these committees.

In addition to this, there is a monthly teleconference between the boards, CEOs and senior managers of the department. This particular initiative has been in place for 18 months now. The primary purpose of this teleconference is to share information between the department and the boards and to receive interim reports from the joint task groups.

The joint task groups, there are a number of joint steering committees and working groups made up of board and department staff. These groups work on projects or issues of common interest. The roles of these groups include sharing information and best practices, providing input on program design and reform, to improve programs and services to clients and developing territorial strategies and collaborating on the development of standards or procedures.

Some of the things that might be included in the work of the joint task groups would be alternative treatment programs, Arctic nursing leadership network, Child and Family Services Information Steering Committee, Child and Family Services Advisory Committee, Child Welfare League Review, Health Suite User Group, Job Evaluation Committee, planning and communications peer group, Addictions and Mental Health Steering Committee, Territorial Health Safety and Well-being Committee and Recruitment and Retention Working Group.

In addition to this, Mr. Chairman, almost all departmental staff play some role in supporting health and social services boards.

In addition to that, many departmental positions are fully dedicated to provide direct assistance, support and advice to the boards. This is in a number of areas including recruitment and retention, board operations, financial analysis, human resources, program consulting.

So I wanted to share this with Members so they would be aware that there are a number of linkages between the boards and the department to offer the kind of support and exchange of information and dialogue that is important to both the departments and the boards doing their work.

Mr. Chairman, perhaps for the sake of brevity, I will leave my response to Mr. Miltenberger's...actually, one thing that was mentioned in closing is Mr. Miltenberger's suggestion that Mr. Cuff got his spurs in the wrap up of some health boards in northern Alberta. I have today taken the opportunity to provide every Member again with a listing of some of the different kinds of work that Mr. Cuff has undertaken to show the broad spectrum and scope of issues that he has looked into as he puts together his team of consultants and associates to address various subjects. I hope that that is helpful. I have also provided more background information to the media in terms of the credentials of Mr. Cuff. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Madam Minister. Madam Minister, in your comment, you said you were going to be sharing information with the Members in the House. Do you have that information available so we can circulate it to the Members in the House?

Mr. Chairman, thank you. The letter with the attached information has been circulated and handed out to Members this afternoon at some point. If they do not have it yet, we can arrange to have it brought down here. There was a letter that I had signed today with the attached information that has been sent out. I think some Members have it, Mr. Chairman, and if others need it, we can arrange for my staff to bring that down and circulate it to Members. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Minister. The information would be helpful, especially on this department. I have on my list Mr. Miltenberger for general comments.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Chairman, it is interesting to listen to the list of practices and procedures that are in place in the department, as the Minister indicated in some cases for many months, a year, maybe more. It would appear, unfortunately, that they do not seem to be working or we would not be in the middle of this review and we would not have heard, unfortunately, in a growing sense, that the system is out of control.

My question to the Minister is what specifically does she intend to do as Minister, the ultimate responsible person for this whole department from communities on to her position, in terms of the management functions within the department, the administrative functions within the department, and the financial functions within the department that are obviously not up to the task currently required of them and need substantive work done to them? Can she just give some key examples in those critical areas what she intends to do to address those issues? Or is she going to wait for Mr. Cuff to tell her that? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Madam Minister.