Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. Legislative Assembly, capital investment expenditures, total department, $328,000. Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate my colleague’s questions and the Minister’s responses on this issue. This is, in fact, at least the second step that I know of. I believe that right in the 16th Assembly we did spend about

$88,000 to do the first round of this. This is overdue. I’m very happy to see it going forward and I’m sure my colleagues will join me in supporting this.

The participation of people with disabilities is really a fundamental concept I think we all subscribe to and that has not been enabled with the current accessibility, even though we meet standards and we’ve made some strides to surpass those standards. So, yes, when people come to us, we want to be able to respond and I think this is the right step. So I certainly will be supporting this. I suspect it may not be a final step. I appreciate the Minister’s openness to further assessment from those with expertise on requirements for people with disabilities and I’ll stand ready to support anything else we need to do to ensure that this building, of all buildings in the Northwest Territories, has the best accessibility we can provide to those with disabilities.

So, no question, Madam Chair. I just wanted to comment on that. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Legislative Assembly, total department, $328,000. Agreed?

Okay. Next department is Finance, capital investment expenditures, office of the comptroller general, $28,000; office of the chief information officer, $553,000. Total department, $581,000. Mr. Dolynny.

Thank you, Madam Chair. My questions have to do with the electronic records and document management system. According to the revised budget that we originally passed back in March of last year, the budget for that whole

amount of document management was about $341,000 if my math is correct, which means we only spent about $19,000 out of that amount, which is a paltry amount of money. Now we’ve carried this over again.

Can we get an explanation why very little of that money was actually spent and why we’re seeing it as a carry-over? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. Mr. Aumond.

Thank you. No, that’s a reasonable explanation.

My next question has to do with the security infrastructure tools and improvements at $231,000. Again, that was the complete budget that was approved by this Assembly where we have not spent $1 and we’re now seeing it as a carry-over.

Can we get an explanation of why? Again, between those two categories we got for the information, the last one, but we’ve got half a million dollars here that was barely touched. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Aumond. Finance, capital investment expenditures, total department, $581,000.

Public Works and Services, capital investment expenditures, asset management, $3.722 million; Technology Service Centre, $230,000; petroleum products, $655,000. Total department, $4.607 million.

Moving right along. Department of Health and Social Services, capital investment expenditures, health

and social services programs, not previously authorized, $22.631 million; community programs, $5.480 million. Total department, not previously authorized, $28.111 million. Mr. Dolynny.

Thank you, Madam Chair. My questions have to do with the electronic medical records where we’re carrying over a little over $3 million here. Again, if my math is correct from what we approved in the last budget, which I think was over $5 million, we only spent about 34 percent of that budget. My question has to do with the fact that we know that this is Infoway information money, this is federal money that’s earmarked specifically for this type of initiative, and because this electronic medical record has spanned over a number of years, my concern has always been the security of funding for that long a period of time.

Are we in jeopardy of being in default of receiving this federal money as a result of not being compliant with any type of schedules of completion dates?

Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. Minister Abernethy.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I hear the Member clearly and I share the same concerns. I don’t believe we’re in jeopardy of losing those dollars at this point. The primary delay in the EMR project has been due to extensive contract negotiations with the vendor. These negotiations included the creation of a new pricing model to reflect a health care delivery model in the Northwest Territories which is different than most other jurisdictions, and we had to work on defining the requirements for NWT-specific functionality in our environment where we have the certain technology that we do. Due to these significant delays as a result of these contract negotiations, the majority of the software enhancements and site implementations planned for ’13-14 have been pushed back to ’14-15. The project overall is anticipated to be in the closing phase during the ’16-17 fiscal year.

The request to carry over this particular $3.421 million includes a significant portion of funding for costs which are reimbursable by Canada Health Infoway. Under our current agreements with Infoway, the earliest funding will expire on December 31, 2015. Basically what that means is that those portions of the project that are reimbursable by Infoway would be completed first and then we can move forward with the other portions. The project rollout schedule has been planned to target the reimbursable activity up front and move forward with the closing in ’16-17 after we have utilized the Canada Health Infoway dollars.

We don’t anticipate losing those dollars at this point. We feel we have time, regardless of these delays as a result of these contract negotiations. We will get the money.

Again, I appreciate the Minister’s thorough response there. From what I gather, December 31, 2015, is going to be a critical time period for us, and I understand that, but I think for the betterment of trying to understand this project, because it has carried on almost the life of the 17th Assembly, where are we at in terms of spending today of the whole project, and what does that money represent in terms as a percent complete for that project, just so I can understand where we’re at with the project itself, both in dollars and as also percent complete.

I don’t have the full data with respect to the full project. I’ve got the data with respect to the carry-over. I would be happy to get the Member and committee that additional information and provide it to them as soon as we can pull it together for them.

I’ll accept the update from the Minister. I appreciate it. No further questions.

Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. Next I have Mr. Bouchard.