Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the Member has raised a number of issues. First, I would just like to speak briefly to the concern on the part of the Member, in her opinion, that I am not interested in working with others or talking to people or hearing what they have to say.

Mr. Chairman, since November, I have travelled extensively. I have managed to go to 23 communities, and many of them more than once. I met with the leadership in all of those regions. I met with all the boards, the board chairs. In every community I have been to, I have toured all of the facilities and met the staff and tried to spend time to talk about the issues.

This whole area is of critical interest. It is in this area that I have been paying very close attention to since I became a Minister. As the Member indicated, this social agenda document is not a government document. It is a document put forward by the people, the committee that was involved in doing it. We have indicated in this House that we will come up with a process in terms of how we intend to respond and by the fall, we want to be able to put a response on the table.

There is a clear area within our mandate in terms of programs and services that we deliver, like health and social services, education, housing, justice. In fact, if you look, all the programs the government delivers have a link to a social agenda, healthy communities and healthy families.

This document is a broad document for the whole Territory. It speaks to the responsibilities of aboriginal governments. It speaks to the responsibilities of the federal government, of NGOs, of individuals and of communities. So as a government we can speak to the areas within our mandate, but for other areas, given the principle of working together in collaboration and consensus, we have to consult and we have to talk about how we are going to look at this document and how we intend to proceed with the ten main recommendations.

I will be meeting next week briefly with the Intergovernmental Forum, which is made up of representatives of the federal government, aboriginal governments and the territorial government, to talk at the invitation of Minister Antoine about the social agenda and to get a sense from all the parties at the table as to how they intend to proceed. At the same time, work is proceeding as fast as possible in the area of the action plan for Health and Social Services and the 40-some action items identified.

Mr. Chairman, the action plan and all the work that has been done by all the consultants and all the visits to communities by people indicate very clearly that yes, we have a system under stress and under pressure. We have the folks at Stanton whose work conditions are not what they should be. We have staff shortages. We have mental health and alcohol and drug workers who work for very low wages. We have many needs in the small communities. We have issues related to medical travel and issues related to just about every program area we are responsible for, such as housing, education, special needs and inclusive schooling.

We have a problem with alcohol abuse in this Territory. It underlies just about every social problem we deal with. The issue of our own personal responsibility and the role models that leaders are supposed to be, those are all issues that cut across all organizations and governments.

Mr. Chairman, this document seeks to provide a broad frame. The Government of the Northwest Territories is one of the principals involved in having the document done, and now we are in the process of trying to come up with a careful, measured response that recognizes the complexity of the issues. It is consultative in its approach for those areas outside the mandate of the Government of the Northwest Territories. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, it is a bit difficult to get into a detailed discussion about this report today, and I look forward to what will probably happen in the fall when we have this document and the government's response in front of us. Then I think we can have a much more meaningful discussion. The recommendations in this document are at such a high level that it is hard to understand how they are going to translate those into action by the government. I think it will be essential for us to have the two documents to really get into it.

These are all good recommendations but I think that the one that really caught me was recommendation 10, and that is the one on prevention. I think that we have a tremendous opportunity in the North to dramatically reduce the number of interventions on the health and social services side if we can get more people making healthy lifestyle choices. It is going to take a real investment by this government in order to get there, and that is part of the problem. In my years in government, I have not seen any willingness by the government to take the steps that are necessary to really get into a meaningful prevention program.

This ties into some of those issues that we have talked about in the last couple of days. For instance, when the whole system is in deficit and when we are arbitrarily saying that all of our health boards that are in deficit have to come up with funds to recover from them, it means that they are busy struggling to come up with adequate funds to deal with issues that they are presented with right now. They have to deal with people who are not well, both on the health side physically and mentally, and there is no room left for them to make these big investments that we need to make on the preventative side, which could save us an awful lot of money in the long run.

The issue that we talked about, for instance in deficit recoveries, makes it impossible for our boards currently to think about getting into the preventative side. There is no way that health and social services authorities in the Northwest Territories, right now, can possibly take on more preventative work if most of them are now in the process of trying to recover from deficits. All they can do to recover from a deficit is take some of their approved funding and not spend it on people or services, but give it back to the department to pay for their deficit. Is it any wonder we have a shortage of people involved in providing physical therapy to northern residents? Is it any wonder that we are short of nurses and having to shut down facilities? I do not think so.

I am going to be interested to see how the Minister responds to these recommendations, particularly recommendation 10, which to me is one of the key ones, because 20 years from now, our entire budget is going to be eaten up by the demands of people requiring assistance if we do not find a better way to invest in prevention. I am really going to be watching to see how the Minister comes back with how he is going to deal with these recommendations and how he is actually going to channel something into prevention when we do not have the money right now to deal with our immediate problems. How is he going to deal with getting the money that we need to do this? That is going to be the challenge.

If we do not find it, we are not going to have any money left for any other programs in 20 years. I hope that he is going to sit down with his Cabinet colleagues over the summer and have a meaningful discussion about where we are going in the health and social services field and where we can go with the social agenda, and come back to us with some really good, concrete recommendations. I am hoping the Minister will address that issue when he has a chance to respond to my questions.

One other area I was struck by, in looking at his Minister's statement regarding his plans to respond to the social agenda report, has to do with the groups that he talked about meeting with in order to craft his recommendations. I would agree that the Minister should meet broadly to make sure he has a lot of public input when he is putting together his response. I think key players would include First Nations. I know First Nations people are very interested in assuming a much bigger role through self-government in the health and social services area.

I am trying to understand how dealing with the First Nations is tied to the Intergovernmental Forum. To my understanding, the Intergovernmental Forum has a mandate that deals only with resource ownership and resource revenue sharing among Northerners. I was not aware that its mandate was broader than that and that it was dealing with devolution in other areas. If it is, then I think that is something we have not been hearing an awful lot about and the public may not be aware of. I think we need to do a better job of making sure that people are aware of that as well.

With that, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I really think we are going to have to have a detailed discussion in the fall when we see what the government's response is. These are very good recommendations, but they are at a very high level. Until we see what they are going to turn into on the ground, they are nothing more than theory. I am hoping that we are going to see some action, or plans for action, this fall that is meaningful. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will just briefly respond to the three areas. First, I would just like to point out that while the Member makes repeated references to myself doing this and providing all the answers, I am just one part of the process. I am the lead Minister for Cabinet, but this Legislature, the Social Programs committee, the other levels of government, the other departments in the territorial government, are all going to be playing a role in coming up with a response that at the end of the day we can hopefully support as a Legislature. I am going to be doing the work to put things on the table and to pull things together, but at the end of the day, it is going to be a collective issue. As the recommendations themselves indicate, this is not just one person's responsibility.

Mr. Chairman, the issue of money is of course going to be a critical one. We hear in this House every day the demands that things be a priority, be it special needs, be it health issues, be it issues with Alzheimer's patients, parity for mental health workers, and that is just part of the issue of demand in communities. Every community has a list of issues they are struggling with that require funding. The Members of this House are very clearly aware of the fiscal limitations we operate under. Where we are going to get the money and how much money is required to move ahead will be a question we will have to deal with as a Cabinet and as a Legislature. We will have to factor that in with a host of other requirements and other priorities.

The focus tends to be a lot on health and social services within the government, which is understandable, given that we consume almost 25 percent of the budget. As I indicated, this is a broad issue, tying in Housing, Education, Justice, Municipal and Community Affairs, Resources, Wildlife and Economic Development, all the program departments. It is going to take work to pull that together.

In the area of consulting the First Nations, it was thought this would be an opportunity to briefly touch base with the federal government, the territorial government, and the Aboriginal Summit, who gathered to deal with their specific mandate. This is a very important agenda item. It was thought that it would be an opportunity to quickly brief them and get a sense from them as a collective what their thoughts were in terms of how we intend to proceed and what they may see as their respective roles in trying to come up with a response to the broader recommendations that are not just germane to the NWT government. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Mr. Bell.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me start off by first thanking the folks who got together to comprise the social agenda group for all of their hard work. I know there were many meetings involved, and it is a large group of people to have to bring together and there were a lot of hours put in of volunteer work, and I think that is very important.

As the Minister has indicated a number of times, it is not a government document. I think like other things that we have done in the economic development area, it was a government initiative to put together this group of people to come back with recommendations on how we could deal with some of the systemic issues we are facing in the social envelope. We were looking for recommendations that government could then take and build on with partners, with other levels of government, with First Nations people, with NGOs.

I think that needs to be said. While the Minister has a lot of work on his plate and he is very consumed with his action plan, and certainly it will take a lot of resources and a lot of time to get that implemented, it would be a shame to see these two approaches and these two plans go down separate parallel roads and never converge. It makes sense to look at, in his response to the draft social agenda document, areas where there are obvious linkages.

Certainly it is not just the Department of Health and Social Services which will make it a little more difficult, because as everybody knows, we seem to have a hard time working across departments in responding to these kinds of things, so it will be a challenge. I think it will be up to this lead Minister to pull in the various other departments in his response.

I did want to talk to a few of the specific recommendations that have come out of this. As Mr. Dent has indicated, these are high-level recommendations. I would think we would have to look long and hard to find anybody who could disagree with these recommendations. I guess it will remain a fact that the success or failure of something like this will depend almost entirely on the implementation.

I remember sitting down with the Social Agenda Working Group a number of months ago -- we all did -- and one of the members, I cannot remember which one, but one of the members made the point that we spend an awful lot of time, money, resources and a lot of our efforts on economic development initiatives. I think this is true. I think these are the racy kind of issues we can really think that we can sink our teeth into. They are exciting and we are on the cusp of some great developments in that area. I do not want to diminish that, but I think it is incumbent upon us to take a balanced approach. I think the Premier has spoken to this a number of times. It is important that we do not forget why we are actually trying to raise significant resources from economic development. Really, we are trying to build a better Territory. Much of that has to do with the health and well-being of our people. We want them to have jobs. We want them to have adequate education. We want them to have the best level of health care they can get.

I think that while we are doing a lot of work to develop our economy, much of that is because we want those kinds of benefits to flow in this area.

When I look at some of the specific recommendations, I have to agree with Mr. Dent again that number 10 seems to really stand out, but I think it can be linked very closely with number 9 as well. I think it is going to be about making healthy lifestyle choices, and we have been talking about this continually, but unless we are able to somehow instill this sense in all of us, then it is really not going to do much to talk about prevention, which is recommendation number 10.

Recommendation 10(b) suggests that we need to invest more in prevention. I would entirely agree with this, but without taking funding away from treatment. We certainly cannot take funding away from treatment because I do not think we are there yet, in terms of putting enough funding into treating some of our problems. It may seem like this is continually piling band-aids on, but these things are going to require significant resources going forward, and treatments are getting more and more expensive. I think many groups, including this government, made those points to the Romanow Commission.

If there were any easy answers here, I suppose we would have them by now, Mr. Chairman. There are not. I would agree that prevention is the key. I would agree that a lot of prevention has to do with making these healthy lifestyle choices. We look at FAS/FAE. It is summertime again and you start to think about the number of boating accidents we seem to see every summer. I think there are real links here with education. I think as our population becomes more and more educated and has a better sense, is more self-aware and has a higher level of self-esteem, I think this can start to build. It is not going to happen overnight and it is not going to be something that this government can try to impose. This is going to have to be a partnership approach with all governments and communities working together if we are going to be successful.

Clearly, something like recommendation number 8, which looks at policies and legislation, we can take a real front-line role in the development of those kinds of things, and the social envelope departments will have to be a part of that.

When we are talking about implementing, assessing, tracking, and communicating these recommendations, we always talk about having to assess and monitor much of what we are doing, and this is one of the biggest challenges in government. After we start programs and fund them, it seems to be another ten or so years before we end up really taking a good hard look to see if they are still doing what we set them up to do in the first place. Oftentimes, we find we are pumping money into programs that no longer have any reason for being. This will be a real challenge. We have to make sure that with limited funds, we really target the money that we are spending and ensure that we are able to achieve many of these recommendations.

Things like the suggestion for multi-year funding, something that we have been talking about for a long time. I think many of our NGOs spend much of their time writing proposals for these little bits and pieces of money that they hope to scrape together. If we could somehow get past that and allow these front-line people to actually do the kinds of front-line things they do best -- which I would suggest probably is not proposal writing, as this is not the business they are in -- then we will be farther ahead.

Again, many of these good thoughts are things that we have been talking about for some time and things we have not really managed to get a handle on yet. I am hopeful that this government will take a lead in trying to pull some of these things together, and we will make sure that the Department of Health and Social Services takes a real hard look at how we can link some of these activities with our action plan, because I think that is critical.

I think we do need, as the member of the working group expressed to us, to make sure we spend the kind of effort and money in this area that we do in economic development. If we at least get halfway there, I think we are taking a big step in the right direction.

With that, Mr. Chairman, I will end my comments. I do look forward to seeing this document and the Minister's response come forward to committee. I think we will have quite a lively discussion about this and much debate, and I look forward to doing that good work. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Bell. Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I thank the Member for his comments. We will make note of his concerns. The issue of separate parallel paths that never converge is one that I would like to speak to. I agree. We have to link what we are doing. We cannot re-invent the wheel. There is a tremendous amount of work underway just within the territorial government that can tie into the broad recommendations of the social agenda. They cross departments and we are going to have to take steps to make sure that we provide those linkages.

We have done things, for example, just recently, as Minister Allen indicated, setting up that secretariat for youth to focus some attention there when you talk about healthy lifestyles and correct choices.

There is a general agreement as well that prevention is critical. I have made that statement myself. I recently met with the Minister of Health for Canada, and she indicated that was one of her key assessments in her new portfolio as well. The key is going to be to put resources there without, as the Member says, diminishing or eroding current treatment programs, but somehow make a shift so that we pay more proper, meaningful attention to the area of prevention.

As the Members have indicated, right now things are high level. We have laid out a process and the detail will be put into writing. The fall will be when we have the chance to have the detailed discussion the Members have talked about. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The Chair will recognize Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, in regard to the reports and the issue of health care and service, one of the things we hear a lot of, especially from a lot of our communities and for people in the communities, is allowing people to build capacity in the communities and also to work with the health providers, the people within the area of health and social services and education and deal with the whole area of community wellness and ensuring that people realize there are choices we can make as individuals.

For a lot of these lifestyle choices we make, a lot of people do not realize that just by doing the little things, the nutritional value of the type of food you eat, being able to deal with the social problems we have in a lot of our communities, a lot of it is in regard to alcoholism and drug abuse and smoking and other areas. I think we have to do more on the side of prevention. I think we have to ensure that we give people those tools and work with the health providers, so people do not realize that you only have to go...every time there is a problem, you run to the RCMP or you run to the nursing station. We have to work out a system so that each of these different areas accommodates the other area to simplify the different areas, especially when it comes to health care and prevention.

We spend a lot of money just trying to maintain the system we have. I think we have to somehow find a way to allow for people and people within our communities and organizations to work with them to find solutions in the communities, and also within the health care system, to find ways of prevention. I think what we see is there are a lot of cases where you start seeing sugar diabetes, liver disease, cancers and different things like that. A lot of it has to do with those lifestyle choices that we make.

I think if you are not able to make those changes, we will continue to pay a lot of money into the institutions where we see the vast amount of money going, especially in regard to the health care system. The pressures that are on it now cannot continue to be burdened without having a means of changing what we are doing.

I think it is important that we find a way to work with the system, but also to find ways of changing the system so it is more user-friendly to communities, to the health care professions, and people within our social services system.

I think as a government, we have not done justice to that, where we seem to continue to say we are putting money into it, but I think we are putting money into it as a way of saying balance your budgets, watch your deficits and what not. We have to realize that there have been changes in the government as we know it.

We have done away with a lot. We only have the one alcohol and drug facility, for instance, and there is a strain on that program. We have people within our communities, especially people within the health care system, who seem to be responsible for all things relating to health care, from trying to be a counsellor to dealing with day-to-day illnesses, such as the flu, to giving people needles, people who are ill, dealing with the elders. Each one of those areas has a different type of responsibility, but we do have to find a way to streamline that system so we are not compounding the problem we already have.

One of the things you hear a lot of is that we have to allow the people to build capacity by getting the people who are needed to assist in the area of mental health, nutrition, and dealing with the elders in regard to allowing for programs to assist in those different areas, to take the strain off the system. You cannot expect people who are trained in one field to try to do something they are totally not qualified for or not responsible for that area.

We have to look at this problem as a community, a regional and a government problem, where we have to work in each of the different areas to find prevention.

As a government, we continue to do studies and strategies and try to find ways of working with the system that we have. It seems like the government, for some reason, is not taking that extra step to work with the people within the different areas, from health care to social services to education to community counsellors to mental health workers, to see exactly how can we make their jobs a lot easier but also work in conjunction with each other, so we know what the right hand is doing in regard to the left hand.

I think as a government, what we have done is we have basically developed a system where everything seems to be in tubes in regard to "You are responsible for this, and you are over there and you are responsible for that and you are over there" and no one seems to be coordinating what is going on within the system. I think that is what is lacking here.

We have to find a system where we have that connection and that coordination, especially when it comes to small communities. There are a lot of pressures on our health care providers in our small communities because they become the counsellors. They become the people who are responsible for the day-to-day things. If you are the one who is a front-line worker trying to make some of these decisions, never mind trying to do your job but also taking on other responsibilities or other pressures in most other cases because you do not have people with that expertise there to help you, such as someone with the counselling skills or mental health skills or nutrition skills.

To be able to work with these people to say that if you do not change the way you live your lives, or basically you want to realize that the constant pressures on us as a society, because we have an older population, we have a lot of people with sugar diabetes, those pressures are starting to catch up with us. Unless we change the whole idea of how we educate not only ourselves but our children in the schools and the people in our communities that they have to make these changes and adjustments to ensure we have a health care system that is healthy. We need healthy people. We also need healthy minds and healthy economies in communities in order to make this work.

As a government, we sometimes try to basically look at health care strictly as a hospital, a doctor and a nurse. It is more than that. We have to work towards improving that system so it works holistically in conjunction with the whole community, in regard to ensuring we find ways to take these pressures out of the health care system and the people in that system, but also finding a new system that works in conjunction with other areas.

To the Minister, in regard to the question, I think we have to find a system to build this capacity but also build it in such a way that it actually makes a difference to the way the system is running now. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Any further comments? Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I would like to thank the Member for his comments. He raises good issues once again in regard to the matter of lifestyle choices and how they are a very fundamental driver to the cost of our system, in not only health but education and social services.

His comments are well-taken in the area of the need to collaborate, of the difficulty of working across departments in government, let alone between the two different governments, be it aboriginal, federal and/or territorial, and the need for us to pay attention and to try to start remedying that matter. To look at, of course, always staying very attuned to the needs of communities and the workers in the communities. Those are good points, and points that we intend to reflect when we come forward in the fall. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. General comments. Mr. Braden.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, from a broad perspective, I think the draft agenda gives us a progressive and a positive place to start putting things together.

I have a brief statement or a message or comment on the approach. It is one I made before, but I think it is one worth repeating, and that is when people find themselves in trouble, the causes tend to be an accumulation of things. There are usually not individuals or families that simply have a problem with the courts or a problem with income support or a singular problem with education, or a singular problem with health. There is usually a basket. There is usually a collection of these things that have combined or gathered up over the course of time that drag people down, present so many barriers for them to get back up on their feet.

Within our system, we have so many different ways that government can help people. It provides so many opportunities for people to help themselves. Within the system itself, there are systemic problems. One illustration is this marvellous technical invention called voice-mail that when people do need help and they are seeking advice or guidance, there are so many different little pockets of resources within our system. We have set up a lot of what we tend to call stovepipes from one department to another department to another department.

As I have said, when people do get into a serious lifestyle problem, there is usually a range of things they need to get addressed and our system compels them to go from one place to another place to another place.

I was disappointed, along with just about everyone else in the Assembly, that the harmonization plan did not hit the streets on April 1st of this year when it was originally intended to. We had some implementation problems, I believe, and we are still trying to sort those out. However, I still remain optimistic that we are going to see some good, forward steps towards some harmonization as a beginning of flattening our system out, making it more accessible, more practical, more responsive.

We look at designing and implementing and delivering these services from the point of view of people and kids, and single moms, people with addiction problems and this kind of thing. If we try and look at how we can do a better job from their point of view, it might help to make a difference.

It is going to take a bit to shift some attitudes here in the Assembly, and I think in our own public service, there are a lot of people there who are doing the very best they can, but I think there is something in it, in a tone and a...

-- Power Outage

I will call committee of the whole back to order. Mr. Braden, would you like to continue with your general comments?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. On the issue of harmonization, we are still hopeful that this program can be put into practice. It is going in the right direction between housing and income support clients and the delivery system. I hope it is going to be the start of what will be a combined service, not only for housing and income support, but also other issues that many people have to deal with on a daily and concurrent basis; education, health and justice being three of the other areas that seem to be chronic and continuing pressures.

That is about it, Mr. Chairman. It is a clue for looking at the social ills from the clients' points of view, from people's points of view, and designing better services to better suit those needs. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I would just like to thank the Member for his well-thought comments. He again provides some good direction and emphasizing the fact that invariably, problems are not single-issue problems. They tend to be multi-disciplinary or multi-pronged issues that have brought a person into our system. We have to encourage that and design our systems to integrate and build our services. I just note those comments and I thank the Member. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. General comments. Ms. Lee.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have some questions for Cabinet based on the Deputy Premier's response. I will just leave it to any Minister to answer this. I notice in reading from this response that these are pretty workable recommendations.

Somewhere in the statement, the government states that the ten recommendations are workable, that they can respond to this. It says here, at the end of the first page, it states, "Mr. Speaker, we are pleased to see that the working group developed a small and manageable set of ten recommendations." Those recommendations are clearly stated and laid out and I will not read further there. I have to wonder on what basis Cabinet can be confident about and write prior to that, just the previous paragraph there, it says in the same statement by the Deputy Premier, that through the guidance of the working group, the people of the Northwest Territories have a draft social plan that makes concrete and achievable recommendations about how to improve the overall system.

In reading the recommendations, I am not sure the government can say with confidence that these are achievable recommendations. I appreciate the government will not be the only actor in this regard, but recommendation 8 where it speaks to policies, legislation and standards, I think it is safe to assume it will be largely up to the government to implement these recommendations.

This document not only has recommendations, but it explains how the Social Agenda Working Group foresees these recommendations. They are very detailed in laying out how they think this should be done. For example, recommendation 8 where the policies and guidelines in legislation should be done in a way to meet minimum standards for programs and services. They should also review existing policies, legislation and standards to protect the public, guide service providers, ensure that people have access to care no matter where they live, ensure that people receive an adequate and safe level of care.

These are pretty huge demands. These are not simple, workable concrete recommendations. I would like to accept the government's position that they see these as workable, but given what I have been hearing in the House and the lack of money for health care and every other care provider, I would like to hear on what basis the government feels confident they can recommend implementing these things.

Before I hand over the floor, I want to refer to a section here for the benefit of the Minister of Health, in light of what I have been talking to him about. There is a quote here on that same page, page 32 of the Social Agenda Working Group report, which says, "Government should ask clients and front-line workers to sit down with government leaders to review directives, policies and legislation for relevancy." I would think that a debt recovery time for a hospital is a policy that the Minister would have to talk to the front-line workers about.

I also want to just make a note of the second paragraph under policies, legislation and standards on page 31. When I read this, I felt like these people were talking about me and what I had to go through. It says:

Other people we have talked to have wondered why people responded to questions with complicated answers. Their questions were about how to meet their basic needs, like having a roof over their heads or enough money to feed their children. Sometimes government workers quoted policies or legislation to provide information. This didn't help.

I must say, Mr. Chairman, that I could not have said it better. I can say that I have been getting very complicated answers to very simple questions, like what is the Minister planning on doing before he implements an action plan that is supposed to be done by 2003? What is he going to do now to address the shortage of health care workers that is making it difficult for women to get a mammogram or to get physiotherapy? They cannot get surgery that they need for the summer. They have to go elsewhere. Those are pretty simple questions like, how am I going to get a roof over my head and feed my children? It is as basic as that, and then I get a response from the government saying, "I am sticking with the plan, I am sticking with my policy, I am sticking with my debt recovery plan and my numbers jibe and I do not really care about your simple questions."

Perhaps the Minister and the government should take heed of that and appreciate and understand what it is they are promising. Based on the Minister's statement and the Deputy Premier's statement in response to this group, they have already promised a lot and I hope they are able to deliver on what they have already promised. I would like to get the government's position on what basis they are able to make that commitment. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, as has been noted by many of our colleagues in their general comments, the recommendations of the draft social agenda are good ones, but they are high level. As the Deputy Premier noted in his comments, we are moving now from the development phase to the implementation phase. I have been tasked by the Premier and Cabinet to be the lead and to pull together a response that will be two-fold. It is going to speak to things we can do as a government with the programs and services in our mandate, and it is going to speak to how we intend to proceed and how we think we can proceed after consulting with our other partners in this exercise, the aboriginal governments, the federal government and the other involved NGOs.

What we have put on the table is an update in terms of the process we intend to follow and a commitment to have a response in the detail that the Members asked for, that will demonstrate we can respond in a meaningful way to the ten recommendations before us. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Are there any other comments with regard to Ministers' Statements 46-14(5) and 47-14(5)? Does the committee agree that Ministers' Statements 46-14(5) and 47-14(5) are concluded?