Just in closing…. I’m not one to point fingers, but if we’re having an issue with collections or invoicing, my opinion would be that it’s up to the CEO to monitor and make sure these invoices are going out and being collected on. It does, as the Minister said, reflect in this $4.3 million. I think if
that gets tightened up just a bit, we may not see a deficit coming forward in the future — hopefully. The Minister did state that, before, there were a couple of years where we didn’t have a deficit. Maybe those were the years the invoices went out in a prompt manner and were collected on as soon as possible.
Like I said, I’m not one to point fingers, but we talk about accountability and that in the Assembly here, and we all feel we’re accountable. I think all the departments should be accountable to the Legislative Assembly. We’re talking $17.3 million here — that’s quite an amount of money. I think I did ask the Minister before: does FMB have any idea of the actual dollar amount of unpaid invoices for the Beaufort-Delta regional hospital?