Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have some comments that I made the other night but would like to repeat them. At the outset, I want to say that this bill, not quite as long time in coming as Bill 37 but this one has been a long time in the works. I want to commend the work of the Minister to get out and speak to regional health authorities, speaking to regional Aboriginal governments and explain the concept that he was trying to put through and make sure that people really understood the concept before we got to this point of looking at a bill. I think that groundwork went a long way to what we found when we did our consultations in the communities, and that was general acceptance and general positive remarks about this bill and that moving to one authority was going to be a good thing. I think that without that sort of legwork done prior to bringing this forward as a bill, we would have had a much more difficult time.
I want to echo Mr. Dolynny’s comments about the concerns of the staff at the Hay River Health and Social Services Authority. It was very clear to us when we had our hearing in Hay River that they were extremely concerned about their jobs, about their positions, their seniority, their pensions, any and everything in and around their employment. They certainly felt that there was no security for them with this amalgamation. With the amendment that we brought forward from committee and that was concurred with by the Minister, I think that sense of comfort is now in the bill and I think those employees should be able to feel comforted that they are not going to be walked all over and they are not going to get left behind.
I wanted to mention, as well, the critical incidents section. I know there were several things which committee felt were important. One of them which Mr. Dolynny has mentioned and that was that an incident could be referred by motion of the Legislative Assembly, but in addition, we made a motion that expanded and sort of better described who could request a critical incident, so patients or relatives of patients, someone working at an authority. That was, as well, a positive change to the bill.
There were amendments to the Minister’s powers. There were a couple of sections where the Minister
had powers that committee considered to be extremely broad and the Minister accepted amendments to change the bill a little bit, so the Minister still has a lot of power but he doesn’t have power over everything and everyone and everywhere. We were a little concerned about that language.
As has been mentioned, there was, I think it was mentioned, but there was a great deal of collaboration in getting this bill to where it is today, as well, on the part of both sides, the Standing Committee on Social Programs but also the Minister and staff, also the legal representatives on both sides. A lot of work goes on behind the scenes to get motions to where they can be acceptable to both sides and then there is a lot of understanding and a lot of back and forth and it certainly makes for better legislation.
I hope that is something that is going to become a bit of a way of doing business in the future. I think it does give us better legislation in the end. It is perhaps, more work, but the objective, in my mind, is when a piece of legislation comes forward we want the best piece of legislation we can produce, and I think collaboration gives us a better one than if we don’t.
A couple of comments I wanted to make from our hearings. I heard in a number of communities that there was concern that with the amalgamation of all health authorities into one that regional voices would not be heard. They spoke quite strongly to the effect that in order for their voice to be heard they needed to have someone representing them who understood the health system, who understood patients, who was not going to be on the board simply to be on the board, but was going to be there to be a good representative and to be a good voice for the community.
Lastly, there are concerns, my own concern. I’m not sure if it was all of committee, but I am unsure how certain regional authorities are going to remain as a management authority, the other ones are going to be advisory authorities or advisory boards. It’s unclear to me, and I think the Minister needs to work on this through implementation. It’s unclear to me how a management board will remain a management board when we have one territorial management board, and I think it’s something that can be worked out. Mr. Dolynny referenced sort of how things are going to work and what the diagram is going to look like, and that’s an example of what things are going to look like when implementation comes along. It just needs to be worked on and it needs to be clarified, and everybody needs to know what the future is going to hold.
That’s what I had in terms of comments that I wanted to make, Mr. Chair. I just want to reiterate, again, that I think this is a good piece of work and I would like to express my thanks to people on all
sides and in all capacities for the work that was done on this bill. Thank you.