Mr. Speaker, one of the things I admire about old-timers is that when they say, “We have a deal,” their word is as good as a piece of document.

My understanding in this case is that an agreement was reached. We sat at the table and we said, “We do have an agreement.” Whether it was on the whole MOU or that particular issue…. My understanding is it was the whole MOU.

I’d like to ask the Minister: was he under the impression that an agreement was reached on the MOU between Transportation and the Town of Inuvik?

Mr.

Speaker, my

understanding is that we had a deal to conclude the MOU between the Town of Inuvik and the department. There were issues we felt we could resolve in a short time and have a deal concluded. That was my understanding, and that’s the basis on which I’m going forward to see this MOU resolved shortly.

Mr. Speaker, my understanding was that the last outstanding issue was the setback of 100 feet from the road. That was the one issue that was holding up the whole agreement. Again, I say I was under the impression that we did have an agreement for the whole MOU.

I would like to ask the Minister: what’s the reluctance on the part of Transportation to have this MOU finalized?

Certainly there are some legal issues in terms of the transfer. The town wishes to have the use of the quarry before the transfer of the lands, and we are obligated to proceed this way.

There are also issues around the transfer of the lands with regard to MACA being somewhat involved with the issue with the Town of Inuvik, of course. NAV Canada has some issues. Natural Resources Canada also has some issues around the transfer.

We are proceeding to work with the town in terms of the use of the quarry and also proceeding with the transfer of the land. However, there are some legal issues that we certainly have to be cognizant of in terms of giving the final signature on the MOU.

Final supplementary, Mr. McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It was a simple memorandum of understanding between the Government of the Northwest Territories’ Transportation and the Town of Inuvik, and somehow the document is getting bigger and bigger. It started off with a few sections. The last count, I

think, was 33

sections. Every time, it

seems, it goes back to the department there are more sections added on. Pretty soon we’ll end up with a document this thick.

I would like to ask the Minister today — and he is the Minister of Transportation; he has the authority to direct his department to get issues resolved — to assert that authority and direct his department to expedite the signing of this MOU between Transportation and the Town of Inuvik. This is something that’s been going on for three years, and it’s just taking too long.

Would the Minister commit to directing — I repeat “directing” — his department to have this thing finalized within the next month?

Mr. Speaker, when the Member and

I, along with the mayor and the

regional superintendent, sat down in Inuvik…. I have asked the department, when the Member was there, to get this MOU dealt with, to see what we can do and what some of the issues are here.

I still maintain that position; let’s work on the issues. Those issues sometimes take somewhat careful consideration. We are in an MOU. We have to look

after the interests of not only the town but the department.

I will give my assurance to the Member here and the Town of Inuvik that the department will do everything within reason to satisfy an MOU that the Town of Inuvik and the department can be happy with.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Kam Lake, Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you. Mr.

Speaker, my

questions today are for the Minister of Health and Social Services. It gets back, again, to what I talked about yesterday and what I had mentioned earlier in my Member’s statement. That’s the fact that FMBS has been paying the payroll at Stanton Territorial Hospital for the past six months, and they’re into FMBS now to the tune of over $20 million.

I’d like to ask the Minister — and the alarm bells should be going off for somebody somewhere if this is the case, and it looks like it is: does the Minister know what the hospital is doing with the $4 million to $4.5 million per month that normally would be spent on or allocated to salaries?

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. The honourable Minister of Health, Ms. Lee.

Mr. Speaker, I want to state, first of all, that the payroll for all of the health authorities — not just Stanton but all government departments and everyone — are first paid by FMBS. That’s a regular procedure, so this is not new. Then the authorities have to pay back those amounts. Because of the cash-flow issues with Stanton Territorial Health Authority, they have not been able to pay that back.

As we know, the authority has been experiencing a deficit situation for about five years now and in the last three years more significantly than the previous two. Because they started with a deficit situation, they are falling behind in paying for their payroll. It’s strictly a cash-flow issue. As the Member stated, no employees should be concerned about their pay not being paid and such. It’s really a strictly cash-flow issue.

Mr. Speaker, we’re talking a little bit about semantics, whether FMBS pays first or Stanton pays. The bottom line is they’re not paying their bills. I’d like to ask the Minister again: if they’re not paying the $4.5 million to FMBS to address the salaries question, what are they spending that $4.5 million on?

Mr. Speaker,

we

should

remember that we do recognize — and I agree with

the Member — that we do have a serious situation with the deficit situation, and we have to work to resolve those.

The authority has a budget of about $88 million. Each payroll is about $2 million. Money comes in; money comes out. They have receivables in their budget, and they are having to pay for lots of things. It’s a cash-flow issue.

The accumulated-deficit issue is something I’m working on with the public administrator and the management of the authority.

Mr. Speaker, the problems at that hospital have been around for a number of years, going back eight years now. I don’t know how waving a magic wand and getting a public administrator in there for three months is going to address the problems.

There are some serious issues with management and the operation of that hospital that need to be addressed, and they haven’t been addressed to date. I’d like to ask the Minister: what are the plans to address the management at that hospital? That, to me, is where the problems lie.

Mr. Speaker, I’m not sure there is one black-and-white, short answer to that issue, and I would have to disagree with the Member that there have been major problems there for eight years.

We do agree there is an accumulated-deficit situation. The government has tried to figure out exactly where the issues are. That was the reason the zero base review was initiated last fall. When I came on board, that process was in the works. We have a preliminary report that came out in April that tells us the Stanton authority does not have the money to deliver the 53 programs as funded and running now.

For me as a Minister, instead of subjecting the authority to another extensive review of some kind, I thought it would be helpful to install a public administrator who is familiar with the operation of the hospital, who doesn’t have to study the institution for a long time. He will go in and look at the information we have now and see what structural recommendations he could make to me as a Minister so that I could make some changes as necessary and as recommended, with participation from the Standing Committee on Social Programs.

Final supplementary, Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. To my knowledge, there was a public administrator there over the past number of years. I’d like to ask the question: what were the former public administrators doing, and what was the CEO doing? Why do we have to get another public administrator in there again to tell us what’s going

on when we know what the problems are? It’s in management, and we have to take care of that. Can I ask the Minister that?

It is true the Stanton territorial authority has been under the oversight of public administrators, because there has not been a board since 2003. The law requires that, and we have had a series of public administrators.

What’s new about the new administrator is that he was given a very specific mandate, a very broad mandate, to go in and take advantage of his experience and knowledge of the operation as well as some of the studies we have done, such as the zero-base review, and to make recommendations to me about precise actions that need to be taken.

Thank you, Ms. Lee.The honourable Member for Hay River South, Mrs. Groenewegen.

Mr. Speaker, in my Member’s statement today I

talked about some of the

problems that have been raised to me by constituents with respect to the way these position reductions were gone about. I’d like to ask the Minister responsible for Human Resources: can he assure the House today that none of the potentially affected employees were singled out for some reason other than budget reductions on the part of this government?

The honourable Minister of Human Resources, Mr. Bob McLeod.

Mr. Speaker, as I mentioned before, the process that was followed is that departments made proposals that were reviewed by the Financial Management Board. Those decisions that were made were communicated back to the departments, and the departments wrote up the proposals in final form. The positions that were directed…. It’s my understanding that due diligence was followed and an orderly process was followed in identifying potentially affected employees.

So the Minister is saying the departments received their instructions to go and look for ways to reduce their spending, including positions being cut, and that he is confident those reductions came back in a well thought-out manner, and they did not target employees for any other reason than just the review of the program or the service that was being delivered.

In the instance, though, Mr. Speaker — I’m trying to represent my constituents — where a constituent comes and tells me they have substantial evidence that, in fact, that was the case, what recourse does that constituent have? I don’t know what to do for them. I could give them the Minister’s e-mail address — [email protected] — and ask

them if they want to send you an e-mail directly. But what recourse do these people have?

Mr.

Speaker, I’m glad the

Member knows my e-mail address.

Laughter.