Floyd Roland

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the decision that the Department of Health and Social Services arrived at to proceed to replacement instead of renovation was something that then had to follow through the process. The process wasn’t followed, so we pulled the tender back. The issue was brought back to the FMB table. A letter was written to Members. But the fact is that when you look at our documentation and requirements, the scope of the project, the $3.1 million was identified, that was transferred already and voted on by this House. The decision then for whether renovation or whatever...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I think all departments as we enter this next phase of business plan preparations come forward for a request for forced growth. There is going to be, I guess, quite a competition between departments as for their request and what gets approved, because ultimately the requests far outweigh the resources we have and we’ll have to make some decisions based on that. We had recognized that NGOs delivering programs on our behalf are impacted and that’s why in a number of organizations, for example, we laid out the third-party accountability framework, which...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I would have to speak to the Minister of the specific department and deal with them through the Minister. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, as we proceed forward from a day-to-day basis as all the rules and policies are in place, those organizations requesting multi-year funding can go to the department they are receiving their funding from and on that basis that department would review that situation and proceed from there. If it requires any other decision items, that would come forward to FMB. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, this comes up from time to time. For example, in some of our smaller communities where we have some trained staff in the communities, whether it is to do with work with heating systems and homes or repairing vehicles, if there are no other contractors available in that community, then they are asked to do that type of work. That is where this provision comes from. Because it is available to all employees, it is as well used in the larger centres. What we would look at, for example, is if there is competition in the community or potential conflict with...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Ultimately, it comes down to the Minister being responsible, whether it is a contract clerk further down the system that got a phone call that said this is the decision made. We need to issue a contract. There is a chain of command there. Ultimately, I will be responsible for that decision that was made, as well as the decision to pull it back when we knew we had to go through a number of other steps. That was done. I will pull together some information on this and be prepared to show the Members. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we can take up the rest of the day if we want on the FAM directive that we spoke about in the past. In fact, all of our correspondence and records show that we followed that. In fact, we have tightened it up to bring some more clarity for Members. I have a copy of that. It is a letter we provided Members, as well, in this House. The actual communications that went by, I haven’t asked my department for a day-by-day process. The report was done as is normal process for Public Works and Services on the review of our facilities. It was handed over to...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, yes, in fact as we received the response from Minister Miltenberger back to the president of the NWT Pharmacy Association, we are in the process of putting something together and I will gladly provide that to the Member. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the area of providing help through the Sun Life program for pharmacies or drugs for our employees is something that I have just recently been made aware of. I am aware of the correspondence that was sent to the Minister of Health and Social Services from a number of pharmacies. I understand a meeting was held just recently, maybe this past weekend. The issue comes down to Sun Life’s automatic billing system that they need to put in. We are informed that that should be in place by 2008, although the pharmacies within the Territories would like that sooner...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, it is unfortunate that we have a number of employees that end up for long periods of time not getting the proper information. But there's hundreds, if not thousands, of files that are handled in a satisfactory manner that deal with existing employees, whether it's medical travel, leave, lieu time, all of those things. So they're ongoing on a daily basis and getting done within the required amount of time. We do have a large backlog of files that we've worked on. When we pulled this unit together there was over 1,000 files backlogged, some of them for...