Thank you, Mr. Chair. The department has reviewed the recommendation, and we agree with the OAG as well as the committee that addressing workload capacity within the CFS system is critical, absolutely critical, in ensuring the delivery of appropriate services to children and families. The department has recognized capacity challenges related to workload and caseload issues in the regions. In February 2019, just a few weeks ago, the Minister of Finance released the proposed budget for the 2019-2020 fiscal year, which, as the Member indicated, included $3.3 million investment to add 21 new positions to support child and family services.
Mr. Chair, let's be clear. We know that we need to make sure that we have the staff we need to meet children and family services' needs now, but also into the future. We are taking actions to strengthen the recruitment and retention and development of CFS staff across the Northwest Territories.
Mr. Chair, the department absolutely recognizes the need to conduct the assessment. This is absolutely reflected in action items 1.9 and 1.10 of the Quality Improvement Plan. The department will incorporate the Gender-Based Analysis Plus tool. Staff are currently taking the Gender-Based Analysis Plus course to determine how this type of analysis will impact the assessment of human and financial resources for a child and family services system.
Based on this additional requirement, the department will be extending the deadline for this deliverable to June 15, 2019, giving us a bit more time to do that work. The department absolutely agrees to share its project plan for this work with committee and share a revised quality improvement plan based not only on this recommendation, but all the recommendations. We will certainly get that to committee as soon as we can, recognizing it does take us a bit of time to incorporate the recommendations that have been identified. We agree with this recommendation in principle, and we are going to do the work. Thank you, Mr. Chair.