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.