Mr. Chairman, part of that answer is Public Works and part is MACA. Public Works assists communities with training programs to operate the water facilities. We also supply them with manuals as to what is required to maintain the facilities to standard. Furthermore, MACA works with the communities to address the financial situation. If the situation develops where the expense for maintaining the water treatment facilities in the community puts a burden on the community and they cannot meet their expenditures through revenue, MACA works with them to see if they can review the water rates or cut expenditures anywhere. Or MACA maybe can come forward with an increase in the Water and Sewer Subsidy Program. We do work with the communities to try to address the specific concern that the Member has raised. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister Steen. Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, it would be interesting to get a report on this particular project, realizing that it has come forward through a supplementary several times already. Sooner or later, we have to nail this down. I think that as a government and as Members of this Legislature, we have to address this issue. I think it continues to go on. It is not only affecting this community but other communities are in the same ballpark.

With that, I will just leave it there. I think it would be good if we can get a report back on this from the department or from the Minister of Finance. For us to continue to address these types of situations where we are finding out that we do not have the capacity in a lot of our communities to take on these responsibilities and we are not carrying out those responsibilities that are in place through different agreements that we have with respect to water and sewage programs, and licences that are in place to ensure that we have trained people and that we live up to those obligations through water licences and what not. I think that sooner or later we as a government are liable as to what happens at the end of the day. With that, I would just like to get some sort of a report back on this and see where we go from there.

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Mr. Handley.

Mr. Chairman, yes, we will provide a report on this project. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Handley. Page 11, Public Works and Services, operations expenditures, asset management, not previously authorized, $350,000.

Total department, not previously authorized, $350,000.

We will go to page 12, Health and Social Services, operations expenditures, health services programs, not previously authorized, $700,000.

Community health programs, not previously authorized, $356,000. Mr. McLeod.

I would just like to get confirmation on the rationale for this budget line. I recognize that there is an increase in costs due to the number of placements in the south, but the second part of that sentence states, "...increased costs for services provided by southern facilities." Is that a result of increased costs for medical travel due to the closing of the ICU?

No, there is no relationship at all, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just wanted to make some comments again on the funding of the accumulated deficits under program delivery support, the $3,483,000 to the various boards. There are a couple of boards who were able to manage their funds fairly well in this last fiscal year. I would have to assume the Deh Cho board and the Yellowknife board, I see that they are not in there, but we have debated this back and forth with the Minister. He insists that this 60/40 funding arrangement, where we are willing to erase 60 percent of these figures, is not arbitrary -- I think if you look at Hansard from yesterday, "not totally arbitrary" -- but in fact, he had consultations with the boards and these were agreed upon and arrived-at figures.

I would suggest that although there was consultation and there was agreement and they arrived at some conclusions, that still does not convince me that this is not arbitrary. I cannot imagine that all of the boards had equally justified overexpenditures to the tune of 60 percent being justified, 40 percent not justified. The Minister has assured us that there will be an accountability framework in place going forward. We do not want to see this again. We are going to do everything we can to ensure this does not happen again, but I think the point still needs to be made.

I assume the Minister made a decision that he did not want to continue to fight this issue for months going forward, and he wanted to come to some sort of resolution, wipe the slate clean and start fresh. I see this as a chronic problem in this department over the past few years. That is, the boards end up with these cost pressures and end up spending more than their budgets allow them to. We have not come up with any concrete way to deal with this up to this point.

We are going to suggest that we are going to force boards to come up with deficit reduction plans. We have been doing that all along. The result remains that these boards really have no way to slash services and I do not think we want to see them do that. Their only choice to come up with any sort of deficit reduction plan, really, is to go to the department for a bail out. We use this bail out with all of its negative connotations, but I cannot imagine how else they are really supposed to recover these budgets and I think the boards are aware of this.

It seems to me that we do not have the ability to ensure these funds are properly managed. I am sure that in some cases they are and in some cases they are not, as with everything. The Minister has not done much to assure us that this is all changing and that this is where it stops. We have done this for the last time. I am hoping that possibly Minister Handley will refer the question to Minister Miltenberger and we can get some sort of assurance from him that this is the absolute last time.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, we cannot look at this issue in isolation. There were clearly identified issues and concerns with the whole Health and Social Services system.

The Member is right. In 1997 and 1998 they came up with a plan, a surplus deficit retention policy. Since that time, up until last year, there has been a slow accumulation of debt to the point that is resulting in this submission.

There are also a host of other problems. We do not have a common charter of accounts. Our financial systems were not very well coordinated. Our business planning process was out of sync. Boards were planning and doing their business planning process months after the department had done theirs. There was not a meaningful involvement of the boards in the decision-making process.

We are taking steps to address all those issues. It was recognized last year that historically the budgets were not adequate, that there was a rebasing done to the tune of $4 million, recognizing some of the under-funded areas that the boards had raised over the years. We are very clearly taking steps to ensure that from here on in, we do not go through this, that our systems and our planning is going to be much better coordinated. Connection and coordination of the system is going to be much better.

This is an historic accumulated debt going back about four or five years. As we move forward with the action plan, it is an outstanding issue that has to be dealt with as it is recognized as a shared responsibility.

As the Minister, I am ultimately responsible for the decisions as they relate to Health and Social Services. In terms of the issue of the arbitrariness of this decision, at the end of the day, as Minister, I was of the opinion that the 60/40 split was a way to deal with what had been, up to this point, an intractable issue, something of a Gordian knot, as I referred to some of my colleagues.

I brought forward a decision based on the need to move ahead in a shared, responsible way. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think the Minister is right. He cannot look at this in isolation. There are some problems that we have had for a number of years now; the fact that systems have not been in sync, there has been no consolidation and no agreement on charts of accounts and these kinds of things is a serious problem for us.

I guess what I am hoping to hear from the Minister is that yes, we are wiping some of this accumulated deficit off, but I am going to Cabinet. I know there is a huge expenditure in IT that needs to be made in order to bring all these boards up to an equal level and sharing the same systems as the department, but I am going to get that commitment from my Cabinet colleagues. I am going to impress upon them that if I do not, we are going to continue to bail boards out. We are not going to have any way to hold anyone accountable if we cannot agree on what these expenditures are and what kinds of forced growth are acceptable and what kinds are not. There is a lot more money that has to be spent in order for us to turn the tide here. It is an investment. It is an investment in our systems to ensure that this does not keep happening.

Can the Minister give us any indication that he will be successful with his Cabinet colleagues in impressing this upon them?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I will be coming forward with the issues the Member mentioned. I would point out that Cabinet has supported the Health and Social Services Action Plan, 2002-2005. Of the 42 action items, some of those issues speak to the systems matters raised by Mr. Bell, the need to have financial systems that are compatible to be able to have the kind of coordination that we talked about.

Yes, I am going to be coming forward. Cabinet has already given the department the approval of the action plan. We have to come back and justify and cost out the action items. We are going to do that.

I have also heard in the last session strong support from the Members to make some of the changes necessary and make some of the investment that Mr. Bell talked about. We will be making that case. Thank you.