Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Last Thursday we returned home to a constituency meeting, and one of the overwhelming issues was Bill 44, An Act to Amend the Health and Social Services Administration Act, that was brought before this House.

This act will create one territorial board, and that’s probably a fine concept, Mr. Speaker. That’s if we were comparing apples to apples. But the Hay River Health Authority staff are not GNWT employees, so this bill stirred a lot of those staff up.

They have a great deal of concern about how they will be rolled into the GNWT system, how they will be able to keep their seniority. We have people who are two or three years away from retiring and now they’re questioning, when this authority is created and they’re merged into it, are they going to be able to roll their pensions forward, will they be able to roll forward their sick days. This is a great deal of experience and a lot of people who are committed to our community.

We have had this issue for a long time. Over a decade ago they looked at this health authority, they looked at the cost of taking in the pensions, they looked at that and the government at that time said no, we can’t afford it. But this issue is back on the table; it’s not a new issue. We need to give comfort to those staff of the Hay River Health Authority that their seniority and experience will be respected in this new process and how it will roll out, how things will be changed, how the new health authority will affect them.

Mr. Speaker, I will have questions for the Minister of Health later today. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.