Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Perhaps my way of answering this question at this point in time, I would simply go through the accumulative surpluses and deficits, as they stood March 31st, 2000, and then update that for the projected surplus deficit for last year.
The Deh Cho Board had an accumulative surplus at March 31st, 2000, of $755,000; the Deninu, $46,000 surplus; the Dogrib, $170,000 surplus; Fort Smith had a deficit of $390,000; Hay River, a surplus of $678,000; Inuvik, a deficit of $409,000; Lutselk'e, a deficit of $24,000; Stanton, a deficit of $1,300,000; and the Yellowknife Health and Social Services Board had a $648,000 surplus.
They are projecting the deficit for the year, last year...actually, Deh Cho is expecting a surplus; Deninu is $35,000 deficit; the Dogrib are expecting a $574,000 deficit; Fort Smith, $534,000 deficit; Hay River, $1,000,000 deficit; Inuvik, a $756,000 deficit; Lutselk'e, an $18,000 deficit; Stanton, a $1,200,000 deficit; and the Yellowknife Health and Social Services Board, a surplus of $178,000.
In this supplementary, there is $3.9 million worth of forced growth funding being provided to the boards to help them deal with their financial requirements for this year. In the case of the work the department is doing, they have been working very extensively with the boards to assess their financial situations, assess why their expenditures are what they are, and work out what part of their deficit has been legitimate forced growth versus what part might have been discretional spending that the board had control of and made the decision to spend on and working through all of that, working out a deficit recovery plan with each of the boards. That additional work is still ongoing.
This is the initial assessment of the legitimate forced growth that the boards require. That is why it is coming forward in this form at this time. As you can tell from the figures I read out, there is still some work to do with boards in assessing their expenditures and assessing the way that is best for each board to deal with the funding situation it is in.