Thank you, Mr. Dent. Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. No, that's the easy part. The hard part is putting together the arguments and the job description or whatever else that a group of employees would have to come up with and if they're not experts in the field of writing job descriptions or identifying duties and whatnot, it makes it very difficult. Is there assistance available from the department for employees that are looking for assistance like that? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The mediator would normally walk that person through the process. It wouldn't be appropriate for the government to participate because that would prejudice the outcome of the appeal. How can you have the whole appeal process work if you have the government involved in that, and the process is one that's established in part by the Collective Agreement? We have to make sure that we're following that. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I know some of my colleagues might not believe this, but that decision has cost the hospital tremendously in terms of staff morale

and retention of employees and you name it, it's been bad.

The other thing that has happened at Stanton Hospital, and I wanted to ask the Minister to comment on this as well, over the past 10 years the privatization of services at that hospital has also added to the low morale and there's been issues brought up in this House about the operation of that hospital. Between the reclassification of positions and the privatization of laundry, janitorial and kitchen services, we've really done a good number on Stanton Territorial Hospital. I'd like to ask you, Mr. Chairman, if the Minister could commit today to take a look at what it would cost the government to repatriate those positions at Stanton? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think that might be outside the scope of the mandate for the Minister responsible for Human Resources and would be a question better put to the Minister responsible for Health and Social Services.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have already asked the Minister of Health and Social Services that question and I'm trying to ask you that question so that I can get an answer. Between the two of you, I think I should be able to get an answer on what it would cost today to repatriate those services. I think that would do a tremendous amount of good for that hospital. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'll make sure that I pass on the Member's interest to the Minister responsible for Health and Social Services.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Mr. Ramsay.

That's good. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you. Members, we're on page 2-71, human resources, information item, client services, operations expenditure summary. Mr. Braden.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I believe that under this activity would come the responsibility for HR to deliver the Employee and Family Assistance Program and I know that this program has very recently changed to a new contractor. An area of more concern or what I understand to be some considerably elevated trends in the usage of this service, employee and family counselling by people and families within the GNWT. I am wondering if the Minister could confirm this or provide any comment on it to the area of assistance or need for counselling and assistance to our employees and families, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the numbers are relatively high and have been high since we started off in the program. It's difficult, though, to know what the causes are, what the underlying reasons are for the increase. That's difficult for us to assess.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Mr. Braden.

Okay. Thank you. I would appreciate that we certainly shouldn't have access to the individuals and their own situations or the reasons for calling on assistance, but do we have any way or are we asking for any way of tracking the nature of the concerns? If we are seeing a dramatic rise or any kind of change in the volume of inquiries, wouldn't it make sense if we tried to find out the nature, what is causing these changes in volume? There may well be things that are going on within our workplaces that we should know about and maybe we could change, but without the knowledge of what is causing people to ask for help, how can we know whether or not we should be doing something differently, Mr. Chairman?

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I didn't use the term "dramatic" when I talked about increase. There has been an increase, part of it driven by access. We know, for instance, that when counselling was locally available in Inuvik, the numbers of people who accessed the program in Inuvik went up a fair bit. As the program becomes available in more communities, the numbers in those communities who are accessing the program goes up. There seems to be, too, since centralization, an increase in awareness of the program. That is probably driving some of the increase in utilization.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Mr. Braden.

Does it not still make sense that we should have some way of tracking, anonymously of course, the nature of concerns and complaints? I don't know that this is any different, Mr. Chairman, than being able to tailor our conventional health care services to the need for certain types of illness. We know, for instance, that diabetes is on the rise and there is going to be an even more demanding part of our health agenda, so we are gearing up for more diabetes. Could it not be the same in terms of employee family counselling? Just what are people asking our help with and shouldn't we have some sense of that to see if we can make some changes, Mr. Chairman?