Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Cabinet will be abstaining from this out of respect for the independence of the Office of the Auditor General.

I just wanted to say that I agree with much of what I've heard from the Members. I receive complaints about the health care services as well just like every MLA in here. I do want to temper people's expectations. I've seen a number of OAG audits. It doesn't necessarily result in change. It's not a silver bullet. The OAG can come in, identify some issues, and then leave, and then we are looking at some issues that we're aware of without the necessarily the solutions to get at those issues.

What we proposed here is to create a health -- what we have done is create a health care system sustainability unit, so we can actually work right in the health care system. The staff is embedded in the health care system but still independent, able to bring real time information to the decision-makers to help actually do that work.

Another thing I want to mention to the Members as well is that the Office of the Auditor General, the way they work with these performance audits is they look at the policies in place, they look at what you say you're going to be doing, and then they look for documentation to confirm that you're doing what you say you're going to be doing, and that documentation needs to be dug up by somebody. And so that is the staff of the health authority. So the staff that are already burdened with a large workload with increasing, you know, complexities of care, now they have to go and chase down a bunch of documents. And while the Office of the Auditor General puts in a significant amount of time on these audits, thousands of hours, territorial health authority staff will also have to put in a significant amount of time that will take them away from the work that they normally do.

I also want to note that, you know, the Northwest Territories Health and Social Services Authority, it's the primary health care provider in, you know, 27, 28 communities, but we still have the Tlicho Community Services Agency and the Hay River Health and Social Services Agency. So this motion leaves out, you know, a significant part of the health care systems that serve, you know, 5, 6, 7, 8,000 residents in the Northwest Territories. So that's just something else to consider.

With that being said, we're not going to stand in the way of the wishes of the Assembly, but Cabinet will be abstaining. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.