Thank you. We don’t have a specific budget for creating or utilizing or creating opportunities around technology. We would have to look within our budget and see what categories might be useable or might be possible to use for that particular project and we will do that. We will look at the budgets that we have. We have a very, very small budget for Aboriginal languages. There’s a lot more money for French languages in here as a result of the recent court case. But it’s a good idea. We will certainly look within our budget and see what categories would allow us to do this work.

Thank you, Minister Abernethy. Administrative and support services, Ms. Bisaro.

Thanks, Madam Chair. I just have one question here. It has to do with the amounts for the health and social service authorities funding. The amount has increased from ‘14-15 revised estimates to the main estimates for this year ‘15-16 and that’s all well and good. I appreciate that costs have increased. Over the years we have had considerable conversations about the expenses and the expenditures incurred by various health and social service authorities. There have been three or four authorities that regularly overspend their budgets and there have been great discussions about why they overspend. We approve supplementary appropriations to assist them to, you know, we approve the money for them to over-expend their budget basically. So I’d like to know at this point with this budget, did these amounts for the various health and social services authorities, do they meet the expenditures that these authorities are going to encounter over this ’15-16 year, or are we anticipating again that we will

have authorities who are going to be in the hole at the end of the year? Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Minister Abernethy.

Thanks, Madam Chair. These are numbers based on budgets provided by the individual authorities, but the Member is correct, we have run deficits in the health authorities in the past. Just for the record, a number of the areas for increase in this particular area include the service centre costs as well as the Microsoft licensing costs, some Collective Agreement costs and other costs that are associated with the health and social services authority funding in the area of administrative support. You’ll notice, as we go through this binder, there’s going to be several areas where money is needed to flow to the authorities that is consistent with the way the new reporting structure is. But at this point, if past predicts future, there’s a good chance that we will continue to see some deficits in the authorities until we do a fundamental fix on the system, which is what we’re in the process of doing now.

Thanks to the Minister. That was going to be my next question, I guess. You know, we’ve talked for many years, since I’ve been here, about the need to have the authorities, basically get them the money that they need in order to run their programs and to determine how much money they need. So that fix was supposed to have been coming probably four years ago now or five years ago now. So, to the Minister, when he says that the fix is coming, does this mean that we’ve changed the way that we fund the authorities? He also said that these budgets come from the authorities. So I’m guessing maybe we haven’t changed the way we fund them if we’re just giving them the money that they’re asking for. But is the fix the governance? Is that what he’s referencing? Or is the fix a difference in the way that we fund them and how we fund them and what we fund them for? Thank you.

Thank you. As we move forward to an integrated health and social services system here in the Northwest Territories to improve services for the residents of the Northwest Territories, we will be developing a new funding model that will fund the one authority, and once we have done that and we are able to work as a system we’ll start to see where some of the cost drivers and demands are, which will help us articulate where we need to spend money in a way that it doesn’t currently tell us because there are, in fact, eight significantly different authorities and decisions are being made in ways that are not necessarily consistent with each of the authorities. So once we move to one system we’ll have a far greater ability to monitor, track and determine what the true costs of the system are. At this point as we

move forward, these changes are based on no increase as a result of the changes, but we will have a new funding model. We will fund in new ways. That information, as its developed, as we move forward, we’ll certainly be sharing with committee.

Thanks to the Minister for the clarification. I understand it better now and I have no further questions. Thank you.

Thank you. Mr. Moses.

Thank you, Madam Chair I have questions along similar lines with the deficits and the accumulated deficits. Just listening to the Minister respond to Ms. Bisaro’s questions, I guess as we’re moving towards one authority, how is the department going to work in terms of the accumulated deficits? When you look at the public accounts records, we have Stanton accumulated at over $15 million and the Beaufort-Delta, which did a good job last year, they had a surplus, finally, after a long time, but this year they have another deficit of about $2.5 million and now it’s accumulated back up to almost $8.5 million. So when you add all those up it’s going to be a big accumulated deficit, especially under this one authority. How does the department plan on addressing this accumulated deficit and do these authorities need to try to get a hold of that before we move into the one authority system? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Moses. Minister Abernethy.

Thank you, Madam Chair. The individual deficits will become the Territorial Health Authority deficit. It will be one deficit. The Members have asked a number of questions about cost savings and there will be, in certain program areas, an opportunity to save money, which we’ll be able to roll back into the system and we’ll be able to use that to start paying off some of the deficit. We figure it’s about a five-year transition period. We should be able to start knocking that deficit really down.

On top of that, we’ll also be able to really dig into where all the key indicators or the key drivers are, and then we’ll be able to have discussion with committee about how to fund those key drivers appropriately over the long term. Through the savings, we anticipate we might see, in particular, is we believe we’ll be able to start working on that deficit over probably about a five, five-plus year process.

Thank you. Just looking at how some of these authorities run and the services and programs that each authority provides in the communities, especially in the communities when you might just have one nurse who might get a call-out at seven o’clock at night. I just want to know

what the department is doing in terms of their overtime policy, which could be one of our biggest cost drivers throughout all authorities. The callbacks, overtime, people getting sick and other individuals filling in. What is the department doing in terms of their overtime policy and whether they’re going to make a strong stance against this overtime policy to ensure that we’ve got employees that might not be abusing the overtime policy? Thank you, Madam Chair.

I’m glad the Member’s actually brought this up. Our human resources are significantly the largest driver of costs in the health care system. Our employees are highly trained and compensated accordingly, and there are significant costs there. Overtime is a massive deal. I’ve asked the department, and they’ve already begun the work on doing a complete analysis of overtime usage throughout the Northwest Territories in different authorities. They’ve actually started that work now to help us figure out what, if any, areas are driving overtime to greater degrees than other areas. Trying to dig in to figure out why some areas have higher overtime usage than others. What is driving that is that one region maybe has some health issues that another region doesn’t. So we’re doing that analysis now and I’d be happy to share that information with committee.

Overtime is actually the rate at which it’s paid and all those things are all part of the UNW Collective Agreement. So, I mean, we don’t have a policy on overtime, it’s determined by the terms and conditions of employment. In our communities and in our organizations, if people are sick, we call people in. If there’s a call in the community, we bring people in because we need to be able to provide that care. It’s where it might be being abused that we need to find and address and we’re doing that work now.

I’m glad the Minister talked about the indicators. The questions that I asked the Minister of Human Resources earlier during question period was some of these areas of undue stress and the amount that our Employee and Family Assistance Program is being utilized. Would the department look at these type of indicators to see which departments in either of the authorities we might be seeing some of our employees taking stress leave or taking mental health stress leave and see which areas we need to provide more services for our employees in that area? I know it could be because of management. It could be because of working conditions. I think Member Yakeleya brought in and tabled some photos of the health centre in one of the communities. Those aren’t good working conditions and I want to see where we need to put our resources in terms of where our employees are taking time off work because of stress and possibly other health conditions, and I think that would be a good indicator in where we need to put our

resources so we can support our employees and our staff.

There are many reasons why there could be high rates of overtime in a community and the impacts of that overtime are certainly something that we need to be conscious and aware of on our staff, and we do have a Collective Agreement that articulates clearly how much time a person put in. There are mandatory rest periods and all these other things to ensure people are getting the down time that they need.

But the Member is right. Once we’re doing this work, depending on where we see the high rates of overtime, it should be able to help us focus in and start asking questions about why, what’s going on, are staff getting the supports they need? It’s going to help us with all of those questions. But I would suggest that, at the same time, there may be communities where there’s no overtime where the same level of concerns for employees would exist regardless of whether there’s overtime or whether there’s not. I know, through my employment with the GNWT, that sometimes overtime is not telling you what you think it’s telling you. So, we would have to analyze them closely.

Just for clarification and just why some of our employees are not going to work and why some are missing work and why some are going on stress leave and why some are maybe sick all the time is another area that I think we need to look into, because when people are sick and people are getting stress leave we’re still paying them and we’re also paying for somebody to fill in their position. So, those are indicators that we really need to address and look at and how to fix those. I think, as we move into this one system, we’ll be able to identify those a lot more. Just more of a comment. I just wanted to let the Minister and his staff know that it’s something we’ve also got to look at. Thank you, Madam Chair. No further questions.

Thank you, Mr. Moses. More of a comment there, I didn’t hear a question.

Administrative and support services, grants, contributions and transfers, total contributions, $43.887 million.

Agreed. Thank you. Administrative and support services, active positions on page 191.

Agreed. Thank you. Health and Social Services, ambulatory care services, operations expenditure summary, $60.154 million. Mr. Dolynny.

Thank you, Madam Chair. This is a relatively new section for committee. This is

probably the first time committee has had a chance to digest the way it’s been categorized and some of the new, I guess, descriptions within this activity summary, so I’ll start off with this. To the department: What was the rationalization for doing it? What was the desired outcome? Then, in responding to that, maybe if I could get a breakdown in terms of physicians outside the NWT and specialty clinics, sorry, physicians outside the NWT and out-of-town hospitals. If I could get more of a descriptor than we have here before the House. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Mr. Dolynny. Minister Abernethy.