Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My questions are on the same line as Mr. Moses. I, too, am quite concerned about the deficits that the health authorities, particularly Stanton Health Authority and the Beaufort-Delta Health Authority have incurred over quite a recurring number of years. It may not have been on this Minister’s watch, but it has been a number of years that we have been hearing about we are going to look at the operation of these two hospitals. We are going to determine what they really need in terms of funding. We are going to fix it, but it hasn’t been fixed yet. I have to agree with Mr. Moses that the Minister said that we are going to take surpluses from one authority and we are going to use it for the ones that are in deficit. As he said, that has been done already. I don’t think that is any way that we can plan in order to get authorities on an even footing.
I really think that there needs to be, and I presume from the DM’s response that there is, some work being done to try and figure out just exactly how much money is needed at these authorities so that they can break even, what services and programs they should be providing and that they should be funded to that level. Again, it has been a long time coming. I don’t hear that it is going to be coming in any short order.
I was struck when we were discussing the numbers for NWT hospitals. There was a reference to the revised estimates for 2011-12 were almost $95 million and the estimates for 2012-13 is about $88 million, so we have a difference of some $7 million, and the explanation was that is the surplus that we moved from the authorities that had extra money
and we moved it into the ones that didn’t. But we are going to be left with a $7 million hole again in 2012-13. We know that it is costing us to run these hospitals more than what we fund them for. I have to ask the Minister – this has been asked of previous Ministers – what is the plan apart from, yeah, we’re looking at it? What is the plan and when is there going to be a definite plan and a solution to this problem of deficits within our health authority? Thank you.