Floyd Roland

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...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, as I stated earlier, the information was brought to the House. Some Members disagreed with the decision made of relocating that facility. It was brought to this House, it was voted on by this House, done. We are now at the next phase of looking at that, as we would with every project. When Public Works was drawn into it we would provide the department that’s in charge of the project with options whether it’s the best value for money. In this case, options were given to the department, the decision was made, and inadvertently, by error, a tender was...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, first I guess I should state for the record as well, as I've stated probably a number of times before as this issue's come up, when a decision was made just over a year ago to implement the HR amalgamation, we had to first go through and identify all the staff within the various departments and boards and agencies that deliver programs for our government, and pull that staff in and locate them into offices in communities and regions and headquarters here, and continue to try to do the work that was being done. When we identified the staff to bring them...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, again the Member likes to work in generalities of issues that don’t seem to work in the way he’d like to see them work, I guess. I know it’s a politically sensitive area. The fact is, this Assembly agreed in the House that this project be transferred to another community. With all the issues around it, it still had the approval of this House. Ultimately, once that project was redefined in the sense of where it was located, the department came forward then to follow the next step of the work that had to be done. Public Works did a report, sent it back to the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In a specific request as we’d look at variances or the request for further funding, again, each organization would approach the department responsible for the particular area they are delivering a service and put their requirements in. The department would then, as part of their forced growth submission for the upcoming year, include them in their forced growth submission. So, for example, if an NGO was working with the Department of Health and Social Services or a board, one of the health boards out there, they would put in their request and if the board is...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, as I stated, the issue of the employee of the Government of the Northwest Territories seeking employment outside of their responsibilities, ultimately a decision is made by the deputy of that department to give them the okay. Once that’s granted, they're free and clear until an issue may come up that has to be addressed again. It’s a case-by-case review by the deputy. I will provide the actual policy, to be clear to the Member, that deputies would have to use. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the area of multi-year funding agreements with non-government organizations or NGOs, as we reference them, is something that we have looked at and we have worked with departments to try to identify areas of how we improve in this area. We do have an avenue where we can do that. Of course, every multi-year agreement is dependent on the Assembly’s approval of the year’s budget that comes up. We are also looking within our Financial Administration Act to review where we’re preparing to come forward to this House with a rewrite of that act and looking at...