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.