Mr. Handley.

Yes, Mr. Chairman. That is the intent, as Mr. Dent has outlined. We will do an assessment to look at our legislation and use that information to be able to keep our premiums at a minimum.

Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am pleased to hear that. Does the Minister believe that we are perhaps headed towards territorial water standards? In other words, are we considering the enactment of legislation that would make sure that all municipalities met certain minimum standards, because that would obviously be one way to assure an insurance company that our communities do in fact have safe drinking water?

Mr. Handley.

Mr. Chairman, that could very well be where we are heading.

Community financial services, special warrant, $250,000. Agreed?

Total department, special warrants, $830,000. Mr. Roland.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In the area of special warrants approved on May 22nd, 2001, "to provide funding for supply of granular materials. Due to bad weather conditions, scheduled gravel hauls could not be completed during the 2000-2001 fiscal year", an offset amount of $100,000. We are expecting this work to begin when?

Mr. Handley.

Mr. Chairman, this is a capital carryover. The work was not done last year, but was carried over this year. As far as we know, it has already been done.

Total department, special warrants, $830,000. Agreed?

Health and Social Services, operation expenditures, directorate and corporate services, not previously authorized, $1,200,000. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the description we have in our supplementary, it looks like we have a large portion of this money for training programs and development of the programs.

What I am trying to get here is a sense of what the breakdown is for workers. We know from the Child Welfare League Report that we have a considerable problem with the numbers of workers in some regions in the Northwest Territories. I would like to know how much of this money is going to go into increasing the numbers of workers in the field? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Handley.

Mr. Chairman, we already introduced 10 new positions into the system in our mains. So this amount of money is being used in order to make our social system work effectively. It goes into a number of areas, in both program development and also in social work, or child protection, training development and delivery.

However, none of it is for additional, new, social work or positions.

Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I am disappointed to hear that. I think that it is essential that we have good training programs and obviously, we need to make sure the system works well.

The ten new social workers the Minister talks about could have easily gone to one community and not dealt with all the problems laid out by the Child Welfare League.

So we are a long ways behind the curb when it comes to having an adequate number of workers. The workload is a real problem. I would have to again ask, where is the priority of the government if we are not putting the money into front line workers and making sure that we have an adequate number of workers to deal with the problems they are facing in the field right now?

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Mr. Handley.

Mr. Chairman, having workers is certainly one part of the problem, and a big piece of it, but having effective programs for those social workers to work with is also a challenge. We would not want to put social workers in there without the programs. So the areas we are intending on investing money in the supplementary request is in support of those child workers. It is part of the recommendations of the Child Welfare League. It goes into areas such as the child protection programs, adoption programs, foster family, family violence, search and reunion training, child abuse protocol training and looking after children training, foster family training, computer-based training and a whole host of areas that we need in order to make the social workers effective in their positions.

So just putting in more and more workers without the support programs I think would result in an ineffective system and very frustrated workers.

Thank you, Mr. Handley. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am not arguing against the need for those programs, Mr. Chairman. However, what I am concerned about is the fact that we have social workers now who do not have time because they are so far behind the 8-ball when it comes to trying to deal with the situations. I believe we have children at risk in the Northwest Territories.

Having all the programs in place does not do you any good if the workers themselves do not have time to deal with the families in crisis, if they do not have time to deal with the kids who are in trouble.

That is the situation I think we are in right now and I think the Child Welfare League Report confirmed that. It did say that there was a crisis when it came to dealing with the number of workers, specifically in Yellowknife and in the Deh Cho region.

Mr. Chairman, again, we talked earlier about having to set priorities if dollars are limited. I would have to question whether or not this is the right split, or whether or not some of these monies should not be split off from program development into making sure that we could increase the numbers of workers quickly.

I just recently got a letter from the Minister of Health and Social Services telling me they could not find the funding to continue providing Yellowknife Health and Social Services with the money they had had last year for three temporary positions.

So we are in a situation where I am scared that kids are going to be put at risk because we are not finding enough workers to deal with their immediate needs. I think that we need to reexamine where our priorities our here. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.