Contributions, total contributions, $124.332 million. Ms. Lee.

Thank you. Mr. Chairman. I want to ask the Minister and the officials here if the government has given a thought, and I'm thinking that this may be under health services or health centres, primary care, first contact care and it has to do with the vaccine that's available to vaccinate young girls to prevent ovarian cancer. I understand that that's under discussion and some

jurisdictions have decided to do that and not others. I'm not suggesting that we should move ahead on into that, but I would like to know if the government has at least taken a look at that, because I think anything to prevent ovarian cancer in a good way is something that we should look into, and other transmitted diseases, but I think anything we do will have to engage the parents and school authorities. So I think that's deserving of a discussion. So I would like to know if the Minister has done anything about that and if not, if he's willing to look at it. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the whole area of a vaccination program and initiative we have been working with the federal government around that, and it has been fairly challenging in trying to get a program running nationally. There are some very expensive vaccination programs out there. The Member is right; that issue has been addressed and is being looked at. I shouldn't say addressed, is being looked at by a number of jurisdictions. We've been doing our work in an area of three potential options. One is trying to work with the federal government so that they can come up with a national immunization program or include it in or revitalize it is what we've been having discussions with other jurisdictions on. The second one is do we incorporate a program where it's a user-pay program if parents wanted to take that initiative. Then one of the options is to look at do we do it on our own within our existing resources. So it is being looked at. Preferably, as with every other jurisdiction, we'd have the federal government step up to the plate here and incorporate it into a national immunization program and make that available through that source, but we've been challenged in trying to come up with a happy medium between that and jurisdictions. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Ms. Lee.

I don't know a lot about it, but from what I'm reading from the media available to us, it's most effective for the young women between certain ages. You know, we don't have millions of people in our jurisdiction. So I'm wondering, and I don't think everybody would go and get it, but if we were to make it available, I'm wondering if the Minister has done any cost analysis if we were to do this on our own, how expensive are these vaccinations? Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, we don't have that information as of yet. We've just started to look at the matter through our chief medical officer's office and we'll continue that work. Of course, we continue to work with other jurisdictions trying to get the federal government to step up to the plate here and ultimately this will take the parents' involvement in something of this matter. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Ms. Lee.

Thank you. As a final question then, I think this is an area that really deserves a really close look at and, of course, we have to have more attention paid to the policy implications and financial implications and how, if we were to do it, how do we role it out and such? So it sounds like the medical officer is looking into it. Could I get the Minister to just give some resources to that, have the staff look at it and come back to us about just different aspects of this issue so that we could all look at it and see if there's anything we can do here? Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, as stated, we are starting to do our work on it. Once we have a better grasp of where things are, we'll gladly sit down with Social Programs and give them an update.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Committee, we're still on page 6-29, health services programs. Mr. Yakeleya.

Mr. Chairman, two questions I have is first the small communities. Again, it goes back to the first contact with health care workers and the types of services. If it's an elder, how ready and available I guess do we get the CHRs or anybody else in the communities that could be used as qualified in that area in terms of translating for the elders? Are they receiving some type of training in medical terms? I just want to make sure that some of the elders in our communities, sometimes there's translators there but they're not very well trained for the medical terms. So I wanted to ask the Minister is that something that's going to be looked at by his department in terms of having some qualified people, get some training and compensate them for being called out at any hours of the night to look after the elders in terms of getting their needs met by the health care? Thank you.

Mahsi, Mr. Yakeleya. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Before I pass this on to Mr. Parker for some specific detail, ultimately through CHRs being that they are government employees, if they're called out in the evenings to help out, they will be remunerated through our normal policy. Any government employee called back into service after hours will be taken care of through our normal arrangement we have with our union workers.

Specifically for some of the training initiatives, what we have available for our community, I'll have Mr. Parker give that specific detail. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would like to ask the Minister, through his staff, ask specifically through his staff in terms of the type of programs that could be available for community members and also maybe I'll go a step further. If there is a CHR that may be a way for a holiday or may be gone somewhere for medical reasons say, who in the community that they could use and what type of compensation would be there for them to be used as a translator or to help out with the situation? Thank you.

Mahsi, Mr. Yakeleya. I'll go to Mr. Parker to answer both of those questions.

Thank you, Mr. Parker. Anything further, Mr. Yakeleya?

Thank you. One more question, Mr. Chairman. I believe that the department and the Minister will be working on some type of issue as to the backup and to the interpreter translating as it's an ongoing issue. I think, Mr. Chairman, that's where the retired CHRs come in in terms of providing support. I think it's a job they have done many years and I think there's even retired social workers in the communities that could help out in that area. So I think there's some ways it could be worked out. I believe that the Minister would work with the health boards in that area.

My last question to the Minister is on the equipment that's needed in some of our communities in working with the health boards in terms of some basic equipment. For example, Colville Lake in terms of some of the basic equipment they need. I know that some of the staff members have done some work to bring up the standards from the medieval times to the modern times, sort of thing, in terms of our health support system. So I wanted to support the Minister in terms of this budget item. I really think that's good. More of a comment to the Minister, I think I don't really have a question there for the Minister unless he has information as in yes we are doing this in the small communities like Colville or Wrigley or Jean Marie or some of the smaller communities that have a small number of people that need to have really upgraded health care services and supplies. Thank you.

Mahsi, Mr. Yakeleya. Mr. Minister, comment?