Bob Bromley

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d also like to recognize a couple of Weledeh constituents, Chief Ernest Betsina and Mary Rose Sundberg. I’d also like to recognize and thank all of the folks that are working on the language groups. That’s very important work that they’re doing and I very much appreciate that. Mahsi.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My understanding was we wanted to make sure that people had additional supplementary benefits and health benefits coverage beyond the territorial GNWT coverage in order to protect GNWT resources, essentially third-party, and that we were going to promote that. That’s the statistic that I’m looking for.

Thank you. Very briefly…

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Thank you. Is territorial coverage, GNWT coverage, included in the 90 percent?

That’s obvious, I would say, given that we’re only up two here net, but we’ve heard about six new positions. It suggests that two of those new positions must be paid in the order of $300,000 or something like that. Again, the math is fuzzy. I note that the other divisions do manage their compensation and benefits in just about every case. Just in the directorate we seem to have this issue. Thank you.

Really the point is here that we only hear about the challenges and kerfuffles when we visit the hospital as committee. I think it would be useful to hear from the Minister some objective assessment of this situation so that we can help him make sure that situation is managed. I’ll leave it at that. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you very much for that information, both questions. On the first one, I guess I would now have to ask why it isn’t up a lot more. That’s a lot of positions to add for the amount that this department has gone up, a $600,000 increase, roughly, from last year, a little bit less, and I think I counted two, four, five, six positions there. That seems pretty efficient. Just a comment there.

My last question on this page is also related to 8-14, so I’ll be ahead of everybody else by covering two pages at once here. The grants and contributions, $685,000, the second line...

I think it would be great if these dollars continued to come, obviously, but in the meantime it makes me very nervous. We’ve been through this before. We were all in the panic when it happened in the 16th because we are using this temporary money for basic service delivery. I think we have made some progress. I’m hoping midwifery, for example, is no longer in that one-off funding.

I will leave it at that. I don’t need any more information right now, but perhaps the Minister can recommit, if he hasn’t already, to work with committee on this as soon as he has information. I would think committee...

I’ll leave it at that. I’m not sure that’s entirely accurate, but I will take the Minister’s word here. Thank you.

I believe the THSSI money is not necessarily meant to cover these things. They will be starting again in one form or another. Has THSSI been approved at some point?