Thank you, committee. Thank you, Minister, and thank you to your witness, Mr. Guy. Sergeant-at-Arms, if you

would escort the witness out of the Chamber, please.

Committee, we will move on to page 6-2, Health and Social Services. I’d like to ask Mr. Beaulieu if he has witnesses that he would like to bring into the Chamber.

Yes, Madam Chair, I do.

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

Mr. Beaulieu, welcome to you and your witnesses. If you would introduce your witnesses for the record, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Committee, we are on page 6-2, department summary. We will defer this particular page to the end. We will go to page 6-4, Health and Social Services, activity summary, health services programs, infrastructure investment summary, total infrastructure investment summary, $31.181 million. Mr. Dolynny.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Welcome to the Minister and deputy minister and team. I’m going to start my questions under the reference of electronic medical records. This is something that I know people, residents, people in health professions have known about for a very long time. This is nothing new, other than the fact that we continue hearing about EMR initiatives with the department and have done so for many, many years. In fact, we’ve gone to the extent of getting health-specific privacy-type legislation already and getting that in place to prepare the Northwest Territories for EMR. Can the Minister give us an update as to what this new amount of money that will be put aside for this capital budget for EMR? We’ll start with that first question. What is this money going to be used for?

Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. Mr. Beaulieu.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Ms. DeLancey.

Thank you, Ms. DeLancey. Mr. Dolynny.

I didn’t hear what amount is being spent in it, but maybe I can get that amount as well as what we have spent to date on this EMR project. If I can get that question answered.

Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. Mr. Beaulieu.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I will get the assistant deputy minister to provide the cost details of what has been spent to date.

Mr. Elkin, please.

Thank you, Mr. Elkin. Mr. Dolynny.

This could be a long afternoon. I guess the question is: What have we spent to date on EMR initiatives from this government?

Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. Mr. Beaulieu.

Thank you, Madam Chair. The total prior year GNWT investment in the EMR project has been $4.175 million, with continued investment of $250,000 in 2012; $1 million in 2013; $774,000 in 2014; for a total of $6.19 million of capital investment. Also, there will be $2.175 million of the initial $4.175 million occurred in previous EMR investment with $2 million carry-over to the current EMR project. Therefore, the current project budget reflects $8 million total, $2 million carry-over, $250,000 in 2012-13, $1.002 million in 2013-14. Again, the $774,000 in ‘14-15, up to $3.946 million of Infoway funding. Canada Infoway funding has approved an investment up to that amount of $3.946 million to the NWT EMR project pending development of acceptable eligibility criteria as well as NWT’s ability to meet the criteria within the allocated framework. That money should be coming through by December 2014. Infoway reimburses GNWT anywhere from 75 to 100 percent of eligible implementation costs to that maximum.

Now I do appreciate the Minister for giving a detailed response to the question. I do appreciate that.

Going back to this EMR project and budget estimates that was talked about not less than a year ago, that budget was just slightly over $4

million for this whole budget. Now, from what we’re hearing, this budget has now exceeded within one year, or doubled to over $8 million during the last fiscal year. Can we get an explanation why EMR has now doubled in price in one year?

We don’t have the detail of why the cost has escalated with us here today, but we can provide that detail to the committee.

I do appreciate that response. My next series of questions with this page deal with a lot of facility upgrades and renovations within a number of communities. My question is, from a standpoint of a user, or basically, a health professional, as we are all aware, a number of our health professionals do travel and do work in various communities, whether you’re a nurse or in any type of health capacity. Do these facilities, when we’re looking at doing these retrofits, these replacements, is there a common theme on trying to create some universality in the design so that there’s a familiarity when a health professional goes from community to community but there is some degree of uniform design? I’ll leave that as a question.

Generally, with communities that have approximately the same types of needs, we build a prototype. A facility in a community of approximately 500 to 1,000 people would generally have the same building built in their communities.