I'm pretty sure that's a new rule, Mr. Chair, but I'll do my best. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Chair, I hear the Members loud and clear, and there are definitely a couple of recurrent themes in there. Earlier this year the Minister of Finance and I had an opportunity to meet with the Member from Kam Lake and the Member from Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh to discuss budgets and try to negotiate our way forward. At that time we clearly articulated that we agree with committee 100 per cent. The areas of homecare, mental health and addictions, and poverty are areas that we want to invest in. We believe that, with this budget that's in front of you today, it positions us very strongly to make those investments starting in the 2018-19 fiscal year.

I hear you clearly indicating that there's a desire to move on some of those things today, and I would love to, as well. The problem is, in some of those areas, we haven't quite finished the work that is necessary to even help us quantify what some of those dollars are, but we are diligently working to find ways to improve homecare services here in the Northwest Territories. We are working diligently to make significant progress in our responses to mental health and addictions.

With respect to homecare, we are currently finalizing the NWT Care Services Action Plan. This is scheduled to be done this spring; by March 31st, we're hoping. This will clearly identify priorities for next steps; things we need to do.

There are a couple of things, and we already know this based on the work that we've done, is we really need to understand what services are necessary to residents in the Northwest Territories. There is zero consistency across this territory as a result of having multiple authorities. We are really a fragmented system across the Northwest Territories. So we basically have to define where we need to be. What are the services that are required by communities?

The next thing that we'll need to do is we'll need to assess the gaps, recognizing as I said, every authority had their own take on what level of coverage of services they want to provide. So we need to go out there and really compare to where we need to be. We need to figure out where we are, so we need to assess the gap. At that point, we'll be in a solid position to quantify what resources we need to fill that gap. We're obviously trying to get that work done as quickly as we can, but it is a fairly significant amount of work, and we will be moving forward as soon as we table that action plan or bring that action plan to committee at the end of March.

Beginning in a new fiscal year, we plan to actually start some of that work that I've just talked about, a comprehensive review of what services are out there compared to, you know, what it is that we think we need. There is some federal investment coming; we don’t know the full amount. We don’t know the parameters under which they want to release it, but you know there's some things we think we can do to actually help us in that planning process so we can actually have a meaningful discussion in business planning for 2018-2019.

We want to explore how we can better integrate homecare services with our primary care services. There are successful models across the country that we want to examine. This will help us develop the new model for home and community care, but it might involve new scopes of practice, and in some of our side conversations, I've heard some really great ideas. You know, looking at paying family caregivers to support elderly or disabled family members to help live in their homes longer, possibly developing a paid community caregiver position, somebody who could help with some of the activities of daily living, shovelling sidewalks, shovelling driveways, helping with some cooking in the home, helping with some cleaning in the home, those types of things.

This model could really free up some homecare nurses to provide the services that homecare nurses need to be providing, which might include wound control or some of the other things that they need to do. We could really make some definite plans for allocating some of the new federal resources that are available. Some of the other things we can use, I mean, once we figured out what parameters or what areas we could spend that federal money is to document some of the best practices that might work in our jurisdictions, develop a model for care, i.e. the paid community caregiver, which I think there's some real opportunity there.

The big gap in our system right now is the lack of assessment tools for our community health nurses to use when trying to figure out what level of services a resident needs. We need to do that work. Until that work is done, we won't really be able to accurately quantify, you know, exactly how many positions we need. So we need to get that work done.

There's some desire, you know, to put some money in to get some feet on the street. We need to understand and we need to make sure that we get the right feet on the street. We need to make sure we do this work upfront. Now, there is a lot of work that I've outlined with respect to homecare, and it's our plan to have all that work done in time for the 2018-2019 business planning so that we can bring that information to committees, have the discussions on where we set our priorities, and as the Minister has committed to the two Members previously that's going to help them form how we set priorities. These are priorities; they're mandate priorities, and the government is willing to commit to these areas, the areas that have been identified.

We just feel that we need to be ready so that we can make informed decisions as opposed to putting in maybe the wrong positions upfront or getting tied to positions that don’t have long-term benefits. However, as we move to 2018-19, if we get to a point where we think we can move sooner on some of these things, we're prepared to come forward with a sup and present a sup to FMB for the possibility of supplementary funding. I can't guarantee that we'll even get to that point, but we're certainly open to doing that if we get there.

With respect to mental health and addictions, I was asked some questions today, and I think the Member from Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh had some really solid comments when he was doing his Member's statement. We're moving forward on the development of those action plans, so those action plans in and of themselves will help quantify and help form discussions between ourselves and committee when we're setting priorities and setting fiscal resources towards these initiatives for the 2018-19 fiscal year.

That plan, the first action plan, will be done this summer, so we'll have lots of time to share and discuss and talk before we get to business planning and work together to set the priorities where we're going to allocate resources in the future. In the meantime, we're continuing to seek other opportunities to get money from outside agencies, outside parties who might be able to help us do some of those things upfront.

Anti-poverty, obviously this is an area that I'm incredibly interested in. I've been working to help address poverty in the Northwest Territories for years. A couple of Members talked about it. I think the Members are exactly right. There are a couple things we need to do. We really need to come up with an evaluation framework. I talked about this the other day. In order to get an evaluation framework, I think we finally have to break that impasse and come up with a definition that everybody could agree to, and we've struggled with that between ourselves, NGOs, and our partners.

At this time, we don’t have those resources to put into anti-poverty, but at the same time we did increase money available through income support to individuals who help individuals who are on low income get food, get groceries, feed kids, live healthy lives. We did, through solid discussion and input from Regular Members, we have fully come to fund JK, which is going to put up to $12,000 in the pockets of many individuals in the Northwest Territories, certainly those with four-year-olds. We need to do some work around anti-poverty. There's no question. We continue to invest in housing.

In Health and Social Services, as we move forward with Building Stronger Families, one of the opportunities we have is when families are struggling they can now come to us for voluntary support, and in some of those situations we can provide funding. We are providing a pilot project in Behchoko right now where individuals who are struggling and unable to pay their rent, they can come to us in Building Strong Families, and we actually have been able to help a couple people pay rent so they don’t lose their homes and the children don’t end up in a neglect situation.

So we're moving on a number of these things trying to move forward. So that goes to sort of the main priority areas. We're with committee; we agree with committee. These are areas that need investment. We're prepared to do it, but I'm simply asking for time to finish the work. If we get the work done in time and we feel comfortable with all stakeholders, including yourselves, that we can move forward on some of these areas, we're absolutely prepared to discuss possibility of sups with the Minister of Finance and certainly prepared to financing into these areas in the future.

I don’t have a clock.