Floyd Roland

Mr. Chairman, $2 million of that debt is in receivables. For the other information I’d have to go to the Minister responsible for Health and Social Services.

Mr. Speaker, I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Deh Cho, that Bill 9, Supplementary Appropriation Act, No. 4, 2007–2008, be read for the second time.

Mr. Speaker, this bill makes supplementary appropriations for the Government of the Northwest Territories for the 2007–2008 fiscal year.

No, we do not owe the Nunavut government any money. There are arrangements within the Financial Administration Act, depending on which department. If it’s actually with Finance, we have some prescribed amounts we could use. With FMBS I’d have to go to Ms. LeClair for it.

Of the $12 million, approximately $6 million is billing to Nunavut. We have been working with Nunavut to try to come up with a satisfactory arrangement. For that detail I’ll get Ms. LeClair to give some more information.

Mr. Speaker, I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Range Lake, that Bill 16, Write-off of Debts Act, 2008–2009, be read for the first time.

Mr. Chairman, the fact is that we have decided, at least at this stage, not to tack on an interest charge to the department or to the billing we’ve had for Nunavut. We have not put the energy into coming up with what it would have been that we might have collected, seeing that we have decided not to tack on an interest charge.

Mr. Chairman, the Department of Health and Social Services in the previous Assembly did, in fact, send up an individual and help the authority go through its finances and begin to look at its books to see where it was having problems. So some of that work has been started. FMBS at Stanton, as I’ve stated, has become directly involved with the collections side. Invoices have been sent out and are due. We’re working with the appropriate bodies to get payment on those.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Deh Cho, that Bill 9, Supplementary Appropriation Act, No. 4, 2007–2008, be read for the first time.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I wish I had a tape recorder. Maybe I could replay the message we’ve answered on this piece.

The fact is that it goes back a number of years. In this particular case, as far back as 1999–2000 we started looking at some of the receivables as the overall accumulated debt started to grow.

There is ongoing work for the Department of Health and Social Services. FMBS is now involved in that collection piece. As Ms. LeClair pointed out earlier, we are directly involved in sitting down with Nunavut and trying to clarify some of these areas.

I’d be prepared at some point to sit...

Mr. Speaker, as we begin the work of the 16th Legislative Assembly to get through this budget cycle, we’re prepared to move into these areas and look at that work. There has been much work done; for example, the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs, when it comes to their funding formulas; Education, Culture and Employment; Health and Social Services. There are different frameworks out there when it comes to the level of service in communities. We want to bring those to the table, as we’d had the questions in the House by the Member regarding a role with the committees and Members of...