Committee, page 8-9, information item, revenue summary. Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’m trying to get a sense, although I see the money is not carried forward into the main estimates. I remember being at the launch of the wait times reduction money, and what type of evaluation or what type of results did we actually see from it? I’m very curious on that. I mean, there must be some type of overall review now that the money has come and gone. I mean, to me, I didn’t see any impact or change in, sort of, the system itself, so did the department do an actual review as to what the deliverable money caused, changed, affected, or improved?

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Deputy Minister DeLancey.

I’m curious, maybe they could explain, and perhaps they explained it during business plans, but I may not have been there or certainly not there at all during that day when they had done this review, but I am curious why capital transfers keeps dropping significantly. We go from $9 million a few years ago down to basically $1.5 through main estimates and then revised just barely over $1.1 million, and now down to $300,000. Perhaps I can get some explanation in that area.

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Director Mathison.

I understand what assets are and donated are and timing. I hate to say this, but could you boil this down to an MLA level and a little bit of English, because some of us aren’t accountants here. Maybe you can give us an example. One example would be fine – you don’t have to give me 25 – and make it an MLA level, I’m sorry to say. Thank you.

Okay. So it’s full cost accounting and just because it showed up in the truck and it’s parked, until it’s plugged in and used and treated as 100 percent asset, ready and available, then it’s then accounted for on the books. Got it. MLA accounting. I think I got that now.

The last question, I think, on this particular page – just because I’m noting the clock, we’re at 6:00 now – professional fees have maintained the same. I guess my question really is around why is that the case. Do our professional fees not increase? Do they change at all? Is it based on a flat number which is it doesn’t matter how we get there, it’s $180,000. Do we, as the GNWT, pay for the professional fees and are we talking about doctor fees or accreditation? I’m just trying to understand

why that’s a flat trend and I notice it’s under vital stats fees, but I’m noticing a flat trend when I say vital statistics fee, but I’m more targeting licence fees under professionals. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Minister Abernethy.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The professional licence fees are for things like medical licences and things like that. With respect to how it’s figured or calculated, I’ll go to Director Mathison.

Thank you, Minister Abernethy. Director Mathison.

Thank you, Director Mathison. Mr. Hawkins.

I’m missing the first part for my first round, which is do we pay it? For example, do we pay doctors’ professional fees? I guess the other thing is, is it affected by vacancies, and if so, what vacancies would this be attributed to? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Minister Abernethy.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. By way of example, physicians pay their own licensing fees and whatnot, but through terms and conditions of employment, nurses would pay theirs and maybe social workers would pay theirs, but a lot of them can be reimbursed.

So, in essence, we would be paying our own fees. Would they just apply back to the Government of the Northwest Territories and through their signed contracts and we would just pick up the costs?

It’s different for every profession, as was indicated. The doctors would pay the licensing fee and that’s part of our revenue, but for professions like nurses, they’re paying their licensing fee to a territorial body or through them to a Canadian body. So they’d pay those, but we reimburse some of our nurses in the Northwest Territories that are employees. So the nurses aren’t showing up here, just the ones that are coming to us.

So, in essence, out of this $180,000, what would the territorial government be reimbursing through its processes then? It just seems odd to me. I understand why we have to count it as revenue. That’s fine, that’s not the question, but it’s based on how much would we actually be paying through people putting their application in because we agreed to cover their

professional fees, which seems a bit of a weird process, but obviously for accounting. Thank you.

As I indicated, for bodies like nurses, their registration fees are not coming to us and we would never be able to account that as revenue. But for people like physicians and social workers that pay their licensing fees to us, that would be, and the Member is right; through terms and conditions of employment we might be offsetting it a little bit for social workers, but we’ll do a bit of an analysis on this to indicate or show what we’re actually taking out and if we pay anything out of this particular area.

Thanks, Minister. Recognizing the clock, colleagues, I’m going to rise and report progress. Thank you, Minister and witnesses. Sergeant-at-Arms, please escort the witnesses out of the Chamber.