Mr. Chairman, I have to say I do appreciate the Member’s concerns and questions and the need to get into the information here. I’m providing him with everything I have, but I do have a little bit of a problem with his question, “What are they doing with the money?” They are spending the money to run the hospital. I don’t know what else they would be doing.
My understanding of how the authorities are funded is that we approve our budget here, but they don’t get the whole $90 million — or whatever they’re getting — in a lump sum. The FMBS keeps that, and they get instalments of money. With payroll, FMBS writes us a cheque for every employee within the governing system, including the authorities, every two weeks. The authorities or departments charge them back. So the money they’re not paying back to payroll, that’s $2 million out of the $90 million in instalments they’re working on. They pay for contractors. They run their hospital.
I don’t know if the Member could give me other questions to get to the answer he’s getting to, but I’m not sure what to say when I get asked, “Well what are they doing with the money?” I have no evidence to think they’re doing anything with the money other than running the hospital. They’re working really hard to get their receivables updated.
They’ve been working really hard fully participating in the zero-based review, because they understand that will get them some of the answers they need and that it has implications for other authorities as well. So it’s a very complex file we’re working on step by step. I’ve already said many times that I’ll be looking forward to going to the committee and presenting all the information we have, and we can make decisions together.