Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, in the broad view, we've been successful with all of the authorities to date and the Dogrib Community Services Board has worked very diligently to try to keep their costs in place. I want to point out that this is a unique situation where about five years ago or so, the government made a decision to create a community services board that brought together education and health and social services. Part of the commitment was they were supposed to do a review after three years, which has yet to take place. What we've discovered as we investigate this and look at it in more and more detail is while the Dogrib Community Services Board has some program issues, there are some other fundamental structural issues that have to be looked at in the longer term, which is what Mr. Handley referenced. There are some fundamental cost issues that have been driving the Dogrib Community Services Board costs.
Two of the amendments are the ambulance services, since they don't have an airport and they have to have means to transport their people to Yellowknife should the need arise. The other one is, once again, as we investigated this further, there's been historical under-funding on the administration side, which has also caused them to run a deficit. We have a circumstance where we have on one side of the equation of Health and Social Services and Education, a deficit on one side of the operation and a surplus on the other.
That's part of the broader review that has to take place. How do we rationalize these concepts? In the meantime, the cost drivers of the ambulance services and administrative costs require an adjustment to the base and a longer-term issue will be dealt with once the review is done and we get a clear look as a government if we are going to continue on the concept of community service boards and what we have to do to bring them together effectively right from this Assembly down to the communities where the services are provided in terms of the ability to do their budgets, common chartered accounts, legislation that allows them to do those types of things.
So this is a unique circumstance and one that we've been working long and hard on with the Dogrib board trying to resolve. This is one of the steps along the way. Thank you.