I do agree with the Member’s sentiment. I think those are legitimate questions as to how this has happened. I was surprised when I think the fact that Stanton Territorial Health Authority was under the microscope, so to speak, because of their large amount of deficit over the last year and a half, that they really had to zero in on their finances. Then we learned in the process that we weren’t collecting or the Stanton Authority was not collecting every penny that they should be collecting. A lot more work has gone on in trying to figure out what is the monies that are owed to them by various parties and how do you collect them.

Another thing is these or health authorities are in the business of providing health services. The paperwork comes after that. The outstanding amounts go back to year 2001. The receivable from year 2001 is $51,000. We expect to write off about $23,000 out of that. The outstanding amount from 2001-02 is about $14,000. We are expecting to write off $9,000 out of that. The 2002-03 receivables were about $11,000. We are collecting all of it. The 2003-04 outstanding receivable is $34,600. We expect to collect all of that. The 2004-05 outstanding receivable is $5,393. We expect to collect all of that. Year 2005-06, Stanton feels that the receivable should be $533,000, but upon negotiation and talking to Nunavut, we expect we could only collect about $45,000 out of that.

The real issues have been the years between 2005-06 to 2006-07. In 2006-07 the receivables that Stanton thought was $1.7 million, but really $1.6 million of that does not seem to be collectible. In 2007-08 we have a receivable of $3.2 million and we feel we could collect about $2.5 million of that.

I have to tell you when I learned of this as Minister of Health and Social Services and learned that there was not a written contract or a clear agreement as to exactly how much you are to charge Nunavut, the first question I said is how could you collect something you don’t know you are owed? I could only say that at that time. I said okay, we need to be very clear about what services we provide and how much we are to charge them, and we have put that in place. Thank you.