Thank you, Minister Miltenberger. Does the Minister of Health…Sorry. Minister Miltenberger.

Mr. Chairman, if we are looking at the total $10 million, I looked on the list. There is nothing specifically earmarked for funding to health boards except the mammography in Hay River. The rest of the costs are for physician services in the Northwest Territories or outside of the Northwest Territories. There is supp health or children in care. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister Miltenberger. Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As much as I am somewhat flabbergasted by the amount of money that we have to approve here, I can see that these costs are ones that we don’t have a heck of a lot of control over. I am somewhat concerned when I look at the information we were given on the utilization of the supplementary reserve. Of the over $6 million that the Health department got in their supplementary reserve fund, $2.3 million went to Stanton Hospital and $2.3 million went to the Beaufort-Delta Health and Social Services Authority as one-time funding. That concerns me. That is a pretty healthy amount of money. By giving these lump sum payments to these two authorities, it means that there was some $5 million which wasn’t available to the department to kind of offset some of the costs that we are being asked to approve in this supplementary appropriation. It is a bit of a shell game, I think. I am concerned about the huge costs that we have to bear with Health and Social Services. I doubt the Finance Minister has an explanation, but I would love to hear one if he has it. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Minister Miltenberger.

Mr. Chairman, those two figures were money that was put towards both the Stanton and to Inuvik Health and Social Services Authority as an offset to help them cover some of their costs and mitigation measures that they weren’t able to implement. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Ms. Bisaro. We are moving on to Mr. Abernethy.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In my opening comments I talked about areas we should have been able to predict that there would be some costs. I know it would be difficult, but I think that in the areas of providing funding for services incurred outside of the Northwest Territories, that $5.1 million, also the increased costs resulting of the finalization of the new physician contract, the $1.2 million for supp health, the increased costs associated with requirements for children residing in residential care outside the Territories, those are things that I mean, the physician negotiations we know are coming. Granted, we don’t know what the results are going to be, but it is an area that if we do forecasting and some projections we should be able to come up with some idea of...Even if we are low, it is better than coming forward with the full amount later, in my opinion.

You are asking for recommendations from us. Do some forecasting. Do some projections. Try and get as close as you reasonably can, knowing that in both, all four of these areas, it is probably

impossible to get a bang-on totally accurate total, but put money in the budget instead of coming back for a supp.

The supp you are asking for here, $10.8 million for Health? That is bigger than our whole supp reserve fund. That one department just took the whole reserve fund right there. It is gone. I think there should be some expectation on the departments to do some forecasting, modelling and projections on the areas of known expense in every one of these four. I would find it unbelievable if the department totally had no clue that these things would be coming. This is more of a comment. I think we should do some more forecasting.

Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Minister Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There are a number of points for discussion here. I believe one of the issues with collective bargaining is -- and we have had this discussion before -- if we put the money in the budget when we are going to negotiations, it tends to be a giveaway as was the concern with capital projects, which is why, when we put out the information, we don’t have the dollar figure in, so that it is not…People don’t know exactly the amount in the budget and they tailor their bids to the amount.

The other issue is, yes, the departments have estimates, but the practice has been in these areas, come back when you spent the money and you will know what you exactly need. If we want to build in estimates, we have to have that discussion and our best guess is that there has just been a reluctance to do that especially for Health which tends to come back on a fairly regular basis for funding. Thank you.

Thanks to the Minister for that. I get that especially around the Collective Agreement and bargaining stuff. In that argument itself, in my opinion, it suggests that we didn’t get it right the first time when we reduced the supplementary reserve to $10 million. If we know that Health, as an example, is going to come back with these things on a regular basis, to suggest that $10 million is ever going to be enough isn’t realistic. So either we have to put more money back into the supp under the understanding that these types of things are going to happen on a regular basis or we have to find a new way of doing things so that this forecasting and modelling can be done and built in somewhere so it doesn’t pop into the supps. Ten point eight million dollars for Health. That is more than our entire supp amount was. Something has to be done here, otherwise we are just going to keep coming back and blowing that $10 million every year. I would like us to actually hit some target that

we have actually set for ourselves. That would be amazing and awesome. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

We will look forward to having that discussion early in the spring here as we sort out going forward into 2010-11. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister. Is there anything further? We are moving on to the bottom of page 10, total department, $10.833 million.

Page 11, Education, Culture and Employment, operations expenditures, education and culture, not previously authorized, $3 million.

Total department, not previously authorized, $3 million.

Page 12, Transportation, operations expenditures. Ms. Bisaro, did you have your hand up? Yes, Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I wanted to ask, the supp is indicating $56,000 for increased utility costs, another $382,000 further down in highways and then again in marine and again in road licensing and safety. I look at the supplementary reserve amount that went to Transportation; it shows $800,000, which was for utility budget deficiencies. Do we have the $996,000 for utilities deficiencies plus the $800,000 from the supplementary reserve? Is that all going to utility deficiencies? Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Mr. Kalgutkar.

Thank you for the explanation. I’m not sure I totally followed it. Does that mean, then, that the department budgeted in 2008-09 for utility costs which they knew they were going to go over? That kind of is what I thought I heard Mr. Kalgutkar

say, that the budgeted amount was too low and they knew that going into their budget in 2008-09, so they had to take the reserve and put it in there before they ever started. If that is the explanation, I’d like that confirmed. Thank you.