Thank you, Madam Chair. Yes, I do.

Thank you. Sergeant-at-Arms, would you escort the witnesses – Sorry. I always forget this. Does the committee agree that we will have the witnesses enter the Chamber?

Thank you. Sergeant-at-Arms, would you escort the witnesses into the Chamber, please?

Mr. Beaulieu, could you introduce your witnesses for us, please?

Thank you, Madam Chair. To my right I have the deputy minister, Debbie DeLancey, Health and Social Services. To my left, the assistant deputy minister, Derek Elkin.

Thank you, Minister. Committee, we are open for general comments. Are there any general comments on the Department of Health and Social Services? Seeing none, we will move on to detail. We will bypass the department summary on page 6-2 and move to page 6-4, Health and Social Services, activity summary, health services programs, infrastructure investment summary, total infrastructure investment summary, $28.089 million. Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I wanted to follow up on the Stanton facility, the work going on at Stanton. Some of these things could have gone into general comments but, obviously, we have not done a good job in the past and we’ve let slip many opportunities.

I’m very glad to see we’re finally starting to get in gear and get a program going to catch up with this territorial facility where the needs are, I’m sure – according to the employee, I’m sure we could hear them say desperate – there are many patients across the NWT who would echo that, so I’m very glad to see this happening.

I’m wondering, I don’t see past expenditures here and I believe the proposal is to move into phase two. Have we actually had expenditures on phase one, capital expenditures on phase one? Does anybody know? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister Beaulieu.

Thank you, Madam Chair. For the prior year’s expenses, I believe is what the Member is referring to, I can get the assistant deputy minister to respond to that.

Thank you, Minister Beaulieu. Mr. Elkin.

Thank you, Mr. Elkin. Mr. Bromley.

Thank you. That was the information I was looking for. I appreciate that response. If I could get just a plain language description of what sort of planning is being funded for the proposed fiscal year and the next fiscal year. I know that hospitals are particularly challenging, complex and demanding, and if I could get just a brief description of what sort of planning is being done over the next fiscal year. Thank you.

Some of the tours we’ve had of the hospital and talking to the CEO there and so on, there needs to be a lot of sort of functional studies done on what departments in the hospital need to be adjacent to each other and so on. A lot of that can result in highly increased efficiency of operations and so on; the lack of it, of course, increases costs. I’m wondering, has that work been done. Has that work been done or is that being done in our current fiscal year? It’s obviously not part of the schematic plans. It doesn’t seem like it would be, but I’d be interested to know that. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister Beaulieu.

Thank you, Madam Chair. That work is being done with the people at Stanton and it’s part of the planning study that’s in progress at this time.

Just to complete that for me, will that be completed this fiscal year before the schematic design and the next steps are begun? Thank you.

Yes, that work will be completed.

That’s all I had. I think it might be interesting for committee to get a briefing on the functional aspect of it since we have had some briefings that suggest that that is important to the successful operation of the hospital. I will ask for that at a later time, but thank you for that information.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Mr. Bouchard.

Thank you, Madam Chair. My question is about the territorial electronic medical records system. Can I just get an overview of what that system will entail and how it’s going to be implemented?

Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. Mr. Beaulieu.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m going to have Deputy Minister DeLancey respond to that.