Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I have not been here that long. This is my third year, but I have enough corporate memory to know that the last time we dealt with this last year, before he was Minister when we were dealing with the deficit at Stanton, Stanton was working on a debt recovery plan. I appreciate the Minister has to give that sort of answer, but that has no practical meaning. I am sure the Stanton Board or management there could come up with a plan on how they propose to cut this and cut that, or whatever, and work with the Minister because it is the Minister who is funding them.
Surely the Minister is hearing what is going on out there, that all of the staff are working at full capacity. We have a lot of staff there who are working overtime to the point where they take their phones off the hook on the weekend. Someone said she has had overtime pay on her paycheque since December. There are a lot of them who cannot go on holidays unless they shut down their unit, for example, the CT scan. It is actually costing us more money because they have to work with a shortage of staff who have to work overtime and we have to pay them overtime.
You know, I can only speak for Stanton Hospital. I do not know what the examples are for other facilities, but I can tell you that the Stanton Regional Foundation raises millions and millions from the people in Yellowknife. Surely that should make up for the recovery plan. At some point, the hospital needs the money or it does not. The fact that the Minister can demand, or maybe even work with them to come up with a recovery plan, is really meaningless to me.
If it jives in numbers, what is the meaning of that if everything we hear on the street is that this facility is in crisis? One more thing we are going to hand to them is that they are going through a $1,766,000 of deficit, for which the government will pay a million but they are going to have to come up with $700,000. I just do not know, knowing what I know and I am sure what the Minister knows, how we can with a reasonable conscience expect them to deal with that.
I need to know. The Minister did not answer what he knows about what has caused the deficit. I need to know that he is not just arbitrarily saying that he knows they have a deficit problem but he can only come up with 60 percent and they have to eat 40 percent. I know the Minister keeps saying he is the Minister of all the facilities and he has to please everyone, but I believe you have to make a hard decision. You have to look at the details, you have to look at the context and you have to go into the details and see what we can and cannot do. Would the Minister answer that please? Thank you.