Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Because there hasn’t been a change in what the contractor is providing in there, and that we’ve been offering with the specific budget for the last fiscal year only, and it’s just from that one source now, ourselves, but in addition to what the city is providing, but then we are taking over for what BHP was providing, so there is no change in the programming. We understand, from our initial discussions with the John Howard Society, that this would be sufficient to carry on for another fiscal year.

Thank you, Minister Beaulieu. Okay, committee. We are on 8-32 and 8-33, combined pages. Health and Social Services, activity summary, community wellness and social services, grants and contributions, grants, total grants, $443,000. Mr. Yakeleya.

Just before we leave the community services, the Minister may be aware of the increase of oil and gas activities and the justice stats. They have been increasing. Clearly, that is going to happen.

I want to ask the Minister what type of response he is going to plan for the Sahtu in terms of the alcohol use, possibly family violence, that show the Minister the increase in the crime stats related to alcohol. It’s going up in all the five communities. I want to know how we are going to support our health centres, our nurses. We do need additional staff, as the other Ministers have identified, certain personnel to be into the Sahtu. I heard from the Minister the other day that at that time they weren’t concerned about any type of additional support. I would ask the Minister to reconsider and re-evaluate the situation in our region. It’s going to get busy. So far we have seen the criminal stats that

say it’s going to get busier. So what do we do? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Minister Beaulieu.

Mr. Chair, the plan was to continue to work with the CEO, then the CEO continues to work with the health centres that may be impacted. Based on the actual impact on the health centres in as far as the number of health concerns or health issues that are brought to the health centres, or a number of social services type of issues that come to the forefront in her dealing with social workers within the communities and within her region, we will have that discussion with her again to ensure that, although we are having discussions with her, I think we were waiting for her to come with a case to say that we need more attention placed here, more attention placed there. What we would do is, we will commit to having contact with the CEO at Sahtu Health and Social Services Authority and run through each of the health centres, each of the social services operations at the community level to see if there is a change in there and change that we are unable to address with the current staff complement.

Fair enough, Mr. Chair. The Minister laid out a reasonable process and path to argue for additional staff. He has to go to the Cabinet and the Financial Management Board. You have to justify.

I believe some information that the Minister has on the criminal activity with justice, I’m not too sure how that closely relates to the health centres or medical service or social services types of work. We need some kind of baseline, I guess. I would again encourage the Minister to keep in contact.

I am going to go back into the Sahtu and I will hear people on the streets talking about it. I may even talk to some of the nurses there to see how they’re doing with the window of opportunity, oil and gas activity and see if there were impacts. It might quiet down after. We don’t know. We might begin with the residue after the companies are gone out and the big cheques are coming into the communities once in a while. I will leave it at that. I will take the Minister’s word on that, that he’s going to continue monitoring them. If there is a good case to put more to the Financial Management Board for additional support, then I am with the Minister 150 percent.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Members, we are on 8-32, 8-33, Health and Social Services, activity summary, community wellness and social services, grants and contributions, grants, total grants, $443,000, contributions, total contributions, $70.955 million, total grants and contributions, $71.398 million. Does committee agree?

Thank you, committee. Page 8-34, Health and Social Services, information item, community wellness and social services, active positions. Any questions?

Page 8-35, Health and Social Services. Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just one question here with regard to deficits for authorities. Over the years that I’ve been here, we’ve had a number of authorities which have been in deficit on a regular basis. Yellowknife Health and Social Services Authority is one, Stanton is another one and, I believe, the Beau-Del Health and Social Services Authority is also basically underfunded. I know that the department is working, particularly with regard to Stanton, to try and revise how they’re funded to try and determine which activities should be done by Stanton and which should not. My first question is: Which of our health and social service authorities will be in a deficit position in this fiscal year? Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. For that we’ll go to Minister Beaulieu.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The answer is all of them.

Thanks. To the Minister, well that’s very clear. My next question then is: What plans does the department have to make sure that these authorities will not continue to be in deficit year, after year, after year, after year? Thank you.

Thank you. We recognize that part of the issue in some of the authorities is the result of just not having the right budgeting for some. For some it’s the costs of doing business the way that each of the authorities do their business, bringing locums in from across the country. So as we move towards dealing with a governance issue at the health and social services authority and trying to change the way we manage our physician resources across the territory, trying to bring the physician resources to the Northwest Territories, we’re hoping to address these issues.

So I’ll just read some of the stuff that we’re doing. We’re continuing to work with individual health and social services authorities to get a clearer picture of the trends and the pressures. We’ll eliminate the ability to retain surpluses and then require that surpluses be reallocated so that we get a balance. Although the authorities are in deficits, they will not always all be in deficit. At some point some were in deficit, some had surpluses and were able to do reallocation.

We have taken the first steps towards the back office approach of financial management, which will allow the authorities to share resources to move to a common financial system. That was another thing

that we found was a bit of an issue, was that everybody was off creating their own financial systems and we’d be doing it leaner, and probably more efficiently, if we just had the one system. As a first step we’re implementing a shared procurement approach that would have the common accounts receivable right across the entire system. So we think there are some savings there, as well, where we would all do our procurement. All, not us I suppose, but all of the health and social services authorities, including Stanton, would be doing the joint procurement. Then maybe we’ll have better ability to bulk purchase as one example of a way of saving in the future.

So we’re looking at things differently in many areas with a goal of reducing these ongoing deficits that have been going on for many, many years.

Thanks. I appreciate the explanation from the Minister, but it is, unfortunately, things I’ve been hearing about for quite a while and it sounds as though we are starting to move to take some serious action to try and increase efficiencies, and that’s great.

I note that the budget has an increase of about $4.5 million from the 2012-13 revised mains to be budgeted for ‘13-14. So to the Minister, is $4.5 million increase in the total budgets for all the authorities enough to allow them to meet their targets in ‘13-14 or are they going to be in deficit again? Thank you.

Thank you. The authorities will likely be in deficit again at the end of the ‘13-14 fiscal year.

Thanks to the Minister, but I guess I’m getting a little frustrated with the fact that our authorities are, in most cases, consistently underfunded. So when is the Minister and the department going to be able to adequately fund these authorities so they will not be in deficit? I realize it may be an increase to our budget, but we as Members should be hearing from the Minister that you need X number of millions of dollars in order for our authorities to operate on a breakeven situation and we’re not. So when is it that we’re going to get our authorities adequately funded? Thank you.

Thank you. I will ask the deputy minister to provide a more detailed response to that question. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister Beaulieu. Ms. DeLancey.

Thank you, Ms. DeLancey. We’ll continue on with Minister Beaulieu.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just a comment at this point. I appreciate the explanation from the deputy minister. I know it’s a long and involved process but I hope FMB is listening, because what my experience is, is that when authorities go into deficit we as a government turn around and FMB approves the supplementary appropriation that wipes away the deficit. I don’t quite understand, and I know it’s not just the department at this point dealing with a possible solution, but I don’t understand why we cannot adequately fund our authorities. That’s just a comment.