Floyd Roland

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We have a lot of examples of where, in fact, we have used funds, or the health boards have come back for more funds and we’ve granted that based on substantiations they’d make. But for more details, if we can go to the Minister of Health and Social Services and he might be able to provide more information than I have. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We do have liability insurance for a number of different issues or situations that might arise. We have found there are certain types of liability insurance that we are just unable to receive any more because of the potential costs that are associated with the activities that may occur. It is difficult in some areas to get certain types of liability insurance nowadays. But for that which we are able to get, we’ve worked to ensure that our government employees, staff and people who work for the government are covered. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. First of all, for the record, we do not view union representatives or those that attend with employees or potential employees as props. They are part of a process. They are allowed to be there if requested by the member appealing. We weren’t able to make the timelines for the legislation. It is still in the works, so we weren’t able to finish it off. We were hoping to have it ready for this sitting. As I said, we will be bringing it forward during the next sitting we have. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will get the department to provide that information. We will look back at the estimates that were made and how they made them and provide that to members. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, both Yellowknife No. 1 and No. 2 boards have their own assets because of the way they’re funded, and they receive funds through the tax base here in Yellowknife. They operate quite independently of our process. We do have a funding arrangement with them, but on the way they’ve operated they are independent of us and sought their own insurance. We can discuss with the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment if there’s opportunity there to work together. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the work we have done around staffing appeals has been a slow process, but we have been working on it. We are prepared to make some changes. We have listened to the AOC and its previous recommendations on the concerns that were around the whole issue of staffing appeals. So, number one, we have recognized that there are problems; number two, we have listened to the recommendations, and there was a report done which we are taking pieces of that and going forward with that. I can’t give a date as to when this would actually come into play, but I am...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’d have to get more of a breakdown as to when the first full year of operation was in. They’ve just moved into it, so I believe the 2002-03 year was a partial year, 2003-04 was a full year. So it’s hard to do the comparison, but I can get that information for members. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is not an increase in the actual premiums. This is a shift between the Department of Health and Social Services over to the Department of Finance. We found in a case where Health and Social Services was doing some of its own insuring we felt that there was a savings by transferring it over and this is the amount that we feel…It’s actually health boards, I believe, were insuring some of their own items. So we’ve pulled them into our total government insurance program, by that saving some numbers. But there is an added cost to their side of the equation and that’s...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the numbers that were provided were using just actual costs in comparison to where the costs are now. So it wasn’t budgeted based on the old hospital, just comparing the 2002-03 year with the actuals for 2003-04 to show the increases that occurred. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Supplementary Appropriation No. 2 requests authority for additional appropriations of $11.201 million for operations expenditures and $5.450 million for capital investment expenditures.

Major items included in this request for operations expenditures are as follows:

$4.7 million for the Department of Resources, Wildlife and Economic Development for additional fire suppression costs incurred due to severe forest fire conditions in 2004.

$2.5 million for the Department of Education, Culture and Employment for emergency repairs to Samuel Hearne Senior Secondary School in...