Thank you, Mr. Blake. The honourable Minister responsible for the NWT Housing Corporation, Mr. Robert McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Right now we’ve had nobody that is potentially affected by the evictions come forward and enter into repayment plans. We’ve got a month and a half left and we’re hoping that things improve in the meantime. Thank you.

My next question is: Will the Minister of Housing be willing to extend the deadline?

We have had this in place now for approximately four months. We feel that is adequate enough time for people to come in and enter into repayment plans and try to honour them. No, we won’t be looking at extending the deadline, because we feel the people have had enough time. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Hay River North, Mr. Bouchard.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I indicated in the House before, Hay River is having difficulties getting permanent doctors. Speaking with the health board there, they’ve indicated there is also a barrier to funding. The fact is that there is a budget for doctors, but it doesn’t allow them to hire additional nurse practitioners and additional

professionals in the community because the dollars are allocated for doctors. My question today is for the Minister of Health. Why is this barrier in place? I guess that is the first question. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. The honourable Minister of Health and Social Services, Mr. Beaulieu.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. At this time there is a restriction on allocating doctor funding. It’s a restriction that’s placed by the Financial Management Board to ensure that we always have enough physician funding in the budget to hire doctors. We have a certain amount of doctors that we need to operate in the North, and that funding at this time is restricted into that budget. Thank you.

In light of Hay River’s situation currently, is there a way that the Minister can implement a temporary moratorium of sorts to allow Hay River the flexibility to hire those additional professionals while we don’t have permanent doctors so that we can have consistent professionals in the community of Hay River?

The department will actually be working on a business case for reallocation in that funding, and also the expansion of other health professionals, and particularly the nurse practitioner duties, in order to try to accommodate the lack of doctors in the various communities. Thank you.

My next question is: What is the timeline that the Minister would expect that we’d be able to implement this type of funding to allow nurse practitioners and, hopefully, a Midwifery Program into the Hay River Health Centre. What kind of timeline?

One of the political directions that I have given to the department is to look at a strategy to bring doctors into it. As part of that strategy, as I indicated, would be the expansion of the nurse practitioner duties and other health professionals. We are actually starting the process now to try to develop something, whether it is going to be a model that brings doctors into the communities or doctors into the North or switching or expanding some duties of other health professionals in order to accommodate this. We are actually starting on the process now. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Bouchard.

Yes, we look forward to that sooner than later, Mr. Speaker. I have no further questions. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. The honourable Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are addressed to the Minister of Human Resources. I would like to ask him a few questions to follow up on my statement. I talked a lot about public service, and lack of customer service and lack of service to our residents. I would like to ask the Minister initially whether or not we have a definition of customer services, whether his department has a definition of customer service, or are there standards that the department has that we use when we define customer service. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The honourable Minister of Human Resources, Mr. Abernethy.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In the past there have been training courses available through the NWT for customer service. I don’t believe those or any courses are currently being offered. As such, I am not sure if we have a true definition of customer service, but I am certainly willing to look into it and get a comprehensive answer whenever I can, at my earliest convenience. Thank you.

Thanks to the Minister. I guess my question went a bit more to the larger definition of service. I am thinking of service to our residents. I appreciate that customer service courses are sometimes offered. I think they have to be offered an awful lot more than they are. To the Minister in the issue of service to our residents in a larger sense, could he tell me whether or not we have standards which indicate, which define the kind of service, the level of service that we should be providing to our residents through our programs? Thank you.

I am not aware of a global statement that we have with respect to customer service. I believe a lot of the departments, with respect to their actual program areas, have identified a level of customer service or a level of expectation for each of those program areas, but as a global statement, I don’t believe we have one. Once again, I will speak to the department and see if we can track something down in that sense.

Thanks to the Minister. I appreciate the commitment to look into this. As the Minister for Human Resources and the Minister responsible for the employment of all the people within our public service, I would like to ask him about the issue of time off at Christmas and at New Year’s. It was negotiated quite some years ago. I would like to know from the Minister whether or not there has ever been any evaluation or review of the impact that that closure has had on the service that we provide to our residents. Thank you.

I don’t believe a review of that nature has been conducted. I can say that there are a number of GNWT employees who really do like the Donnie Days and enjoy getting the time off. With respect to the impact on customer service, we don’t have that information. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Final, short supplementary, Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thanks to the Minister. I am sure that there are employees who enjoy a paid week at Christmas. We all would, I am sure. I would like to ask my last question to the Minister. If there has not ever been an evaluation done, I would like to ask the Minister if he would commit to consider doing a review or an evaluation and look at the benefit or the lack of benefit of keeping offices open over Christmas, whether it be every second day or every day except for stat holidays, half staff, full staff. Would he look at that kind of an evaluation or review? Thank you.