Thank you. We’ll start with a short break. Ten minutes.

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I’d like to call Committee of the Whole back to order. We are considering Tabled Document 62-16(4), NWT Main Estimates, 2010-2011, consideration of Health and Social Services. I would like to ask the Minister if she’d like to bring in witnesses.

Yes, please. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Minister. I’d ask the Sergeant-at-Arms to escort the witnesses into the House, please.

If the Minister would introduce her witnesses.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. To my left is deputy minister of Health and Social Services, Paddy Meade; and to my right is director of finance, Mr. Derek Elkin.

Thank you. Committee, we are on page 8-29, activity summary, community health programs, operations expenditure summary, $85.067 million.

Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have a question with regard to contract services. There is a rather large increase in contract services from the revised estimates of 2009-10 to the main estimates of 2010-11. We go from $8 million to almost $13 million. I wonder if I could have an explanation for that increase, please. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Minister Lee.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The increase is the southern placement of children contract for $1.3 million and $2.91 million for residential...$2.091 million for residential southern placement for adults. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thanks for the information. I guess it leads me to then ask whether or not this is an increase that we can continue to expect. Our actuals in 2008-09 were about the same, $12 million. We then estimated quite a bit less in 2009-10 and now we’ve gone back up in 2010-11. So is $12 million or almost $13 million a better number in terms of our ongoing expenditures or is this a bit of an anomaly? I know it’s hard to predict how many kids we are going to have to send out, but is this an indication of a trend, I guess, that we’re going to continue to see?

This is an area where expenditures are made on the basis of need. We place children and adults as they are needed. I can advise the Members that the numbers of clients have stayed quite consistent over the last number of years. There is a little bit of up and down, but there’s not a general trend upwards.

What we have seen is an increase in costs of caring for these children and adults. Some of them are quite high needs and it’s the rates that some of these facilities are charging us and they have all been going up, especially across Alberta. Thank you.

That certainly makes sense. The other question I had is in program delivery details and there is a very large jump between last year’s revised main estimates and this year’s budgeted mains. We go from $20.5 million to just over $26 million for adult continuing care services. Is there a specific reason for that? Is it a number of factors? If I could have an explanation, please. Thank you.

I think I will ask the director of finance to explain that. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister. Mr. Elkin.

Thank you, Mr. Elkin. That completes Ms. Bisaro’s line of questions for now. Ms. Bisaro, did you have anything further? Moving on to Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just a question for the Minister. Some of the numbers on the people we have in care in southern placements and some of the numbers that I have seen are quite alarming. They have gone from 27 in 2004-2005 to 56 now. I think some of them have been repatriated back to the Northwest Territories at the Hay River facility, but I was just wondering if the Minister can comment on what efforts the department is making to try to get those individuals that are in southern care back into the Northwest Territories so they can be closer to their families. So if we are spending in some cases in excess or $500,000 or $600,000 a year to house somebody in a southern placement, it only makes sense that we look at bringing them back here and keep that money in the North, whether it is training in a local provider service or bringing somebody in to do it here, so that the money actually stays in the Northwest Territories. I think that is something that we have to pay attention to, Mr. Chairman, so I would like to hear what the Ministers plans are in that regard. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Minister Lee.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As I stated earlier, the numbers of adults and children that we place in these institutional settings hasn’t changed that much and I could give Members figures on that. I remember seeing that most recently. It is the cost of providing those services that has gone up.

With respect to the Hay River assisted living facility, we have, I believe, about 20 residents there and the department has worked very hard to look at all the people we have in southern settings to see who are eligible and who can be moved up and that depends on the person’s care needs as well as the family’s needs. So there have been case management meetings happening on each of those situations and we have been successful in moving some of the people in southern jurisdictions to Hay River assisted living facility as well. Some of the other ones that have moved into Hay River are those ones who would have gone south if we didn’t have the place in Hay River. So there is a cost avoidance there.

So the answer to MLA Ramsay, I want to tell him that we do constantly review the cases of our residents we have in southern placements. Some of them are long term, some of them will probably never be able to come home. But I think there is about half of them, there are some who are more short term and we constantly review them to see if we need to send them south, because obviously we want to keep them north and keep them closer to home and be able to place them in our own setting.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I take the Member’s point and I stand to be corrected. I don’t have the information from five years back, but I do have the information in front of me for 2008 and 2009 compared to this upcoming year. We had 51 adults in 2008-2009 for 15,000 bed days and for this year we project to have 52 for 11,900 bed days, so we are having about 4,000 less but the cost will be higher because of the costs going up per bed. For children, we had 49 youth in southern facilities, we expect to have 48 this year. Last year we had13,629 bed days and this year we

expect to have less, 9,100, but once again the cost will not substantially go down so it is the cost per bed that is driving up the cost here. Thank you.