That is certainly one of the issues. I mean, pension is where the significant cost is going to come from. There is no denying that, but the Hay River collective agreement is different than the UNW collective agreement. We have had some early discussions with union as we are talking about bringing Hay River in, and there are certain things that they wanted to flag and things like seniority are one of them. We have to figure those out. We can't have two collective agreements if we roll into one authority, so we have to--it's going to take some negotiations. It's not just a cost thing. It's a negotiation.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Mr. Simpson.

Thank you. I will leave that regional issue alone. I guess it's kind of a territorial issue when you're talking about tens of millions of dollars. I just wanted to discuss the Human Tissue Donation Act. I think this would be the section. It was passed in the last Assembly. It came into force last June, I believe, and the latest information I found on it says that we have to wait until the organ donation registry is set up before people can register. I was wondering how far along that process is, if that's going to happen in this budget year. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Simpson. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Unfortunately, we are not as far along as we would like it. We have basically done everything that we need to do on our end. We had agreements to move forward with the Alberta government. Since their election, it has put a bit of a hold. They have indicated that they're still happy for us to come on board, but they weren't ready or prepared to actually begin that process. They had other things they needed to take care of in Alberta. We will be part of the Alberta registry, and that's what the one-time costs were to set up our portals and those types of things to allow NWT residents to access their registry.

We still get indication from them that they want us to be part of the registry, that they are willing to move forward. I have had one-on-one conversations with the new Minister of Health in Alberta. She indicated to me they still want us to come on, but they haven't re-engaged, given us a timeline of when they're ready to start actually developing and doing the work. They are going through significant challenges in that province and it's a new government. We keep asking. I will continue to ask. Next time I see the Minister, I will bring it up again.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Mr. Simpson.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you for the answers. Nothing further right now. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Simpson. Recognizing Ms. Green.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I wanted to follow along with some more questions about the health system transformation. Could the Minister tell us what the cost of health system transformation is up until this point and for this fiscal year. I am not sure where to find that in the mains here. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Green. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, as they look for the exact numbers, the funding that we needed in order to do the work and the analysis and the system design and all the work required to move from a fragmented multi-system, multi-competing system to a single authority was actually federal funding that we got under the Territorial Health Innovation Fund.

The fund, the total fund is $4.3 million, of which we use some of it for implementing and designing regional health strategies, some of it for medical travel, and $2.8 million annually for the duration of implementation and design for the system transformation costs, so that's hiring the people, doing the work, doing the analysis, getting the consultants, helping with the design.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Ms. Green.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you for that answer. For how many more years into the future will there be this $2.8 million available for implementation and design? Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Green. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, it was three-year funding from the federal government. This is the last year of that fund. If there is any money left over for any of the three initiatives that I have indicated, if we haven't spent all the federal dollars, we can roll it forward into the next fiscal year.

As far as the Territorial Health Authority moving forward, that will be our cost and we were designing a system that wasn't going to cost us any more money. We weren't asking for more money to move to this single system, but we needed these innovation dollars to help us design, implement.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Ms. Green.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So if I understand correctly that once this design and implementation phase finished at the end of this fiscal year, there won't be any additional costs to the department for health system transformation. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Green. Mr. Minister.

No, Mr. Chair. I mean, at the end of the day, we're re-describing existing positions, some re-profiling some positions out of the department that are going to now be territorial health Authority positions. This isn't about growth. This isn't about creating a whole bunch of new positions. This is about utilizing what we have in a better way in a more collaborative way to meet the needs of the residents in the Northwest Territories.

In the future, what you will see is a smaller department, more as a ministry function, and an authority that actually has some of the functions and roles that are in the department today, and then the authorities are going to maintain their CEOs, their positions, but the relationships, how they work together will be changed. We didn't have Government of the Northwest Territories dollars to do the design work. We used the federal innovation dollars to do the design work and implementation. From that point forward, we'll be using the health dollars.

Now, having said that, who knows what tomorrow looks like. We may do some additional activities. We may come back to you, but anything we come back to you will come through this House for discussion. I can't foresee that at this point, but forever is a long time.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Ms. Green.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So what I take from that is that it's not supposed to cost any more money, but it could.

Thank you, Ms. Green. Mr. Minister.

I don't anticipate that at this time, but as we roll forward and create this new system, new principles and ideas might come forward that might result in a change in how we're doing business. I don't anticipate that, but it would be foolish to say that change is never going to happen.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Ms. Green.