Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There are basically two solutions, two long-term solutions that would address this issue. The first is amending the authority funding to address the structural deficits. This being addressing this with what is happening. Like I indicated previously to some questions was that we have to move some of the costs right now. The budget for some of the costs like a lot of the medical travel and doctors’ services to the Stanton in order to cover it. Right now the health and social services authorities that have the budget do end up sending their individual clients to Stanton. Stanton then picks up the cost for those individuals. In order to make that change we would have to essentially transfer those budgets. Keep the governance structure but just
transfer more of the budget numbers from the other health and social services authorities to Yellowknife.
Also, some of the costs of employee benefits, which was substantially underfunded. Those are specific to the Stanton Health Authority as well.
The other big item that the department can do is reforming the governance to support the operating as one system. It is to bring all of the costs into basically the centre. To have an example would be doctors and possibly nurses, to bring in those costs under one roof. That has opposition, obviously. Right now what’s happening is we are operating a system where the health authorities are bringing locums in in Yellowknife, or the Stanton or YK Health and Social Services Authority is also providing some of the doctors to a couple of the communities, but reforming governance would be more than just having that cost centralized. We could also have the cost of procurement centralized. A lot of the finance and then a lot of the back office, as it is often referred to, can also be moved into a more central system. Now, that doesn’t mean actually relocating these individual employees to Yellowknife. The reform governance would be done in conjunction with the other health and social services authorities. If procurement was centralized, then the operation and the budgeting of that procurement would work under one system, not necessarily in one location. The same with finance. There are efficiencies to be had there, there’s no question about it.
As we go out to the communities we ask the communities what they think of the idea. At the Joint Leadership Council we have some opposition and some in favour, and at the community level, when we went to the Beaufort-Delta we did have some opposition and some in favour of it. Some people thought it was creative, that if we had operated one system that we’d be able to better manage our budgeting and our expenditures.