Glen Abernethy

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I mean without seeing the details, we can’t say sure, but that sounds like that meets the criteria for this particular fund, and obviously we’d love to see a proposal, but I mean until we see the detail it’d be impossible to say whether it met the criteria or not. We could share the criteria with the Member, he could share it with the community and I mean we’d be happy to see a proposal.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, these were internal re-allocations. I believe they were vacant, but we will confirm.

I can’t remember the exact date of the court case, but it was actually a number of years ago. It took the Government of the Northwest Territories a couple years to actually figure out how we’re going to bring in this or meet our obligation under that court ruling, and we rolled it out during the 2014-15 fiscal year.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’m a little confused. What line is the Member referring to? I don’t think homecare falls under this section. Actually, homecare doesn’t fall under this section. What line is the Member referring to?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, with the recent ruling of the Supreme Court on Metis health benefits, we’re hoping that that is in fact the case, but we actually have no details on how they plan to move forward to address that particular court ruling. We will be following up with the federal government to see what, if any, dollars will flow our way.

The Member is correct, we spend about $2 million plus dollars a year providing Metis health benefits. We’re hoping that those are the type of dollars we see from the federal government. At this time, we have no indication from them what they intend...

I can’t say when those negotiations will begin, but they certainly will not begin until we have concluded all the other collective bargaining negotiations that are underway, because as I said, it’s often the same people. As far as the pension costing, we are continuing to do that work. It isn’t simple. Superann has a lot of questions. They have a lot of concerns. We need to ensure that whatever happens is fair and reasonable. We don’t know what the cost on the individual basis might be. We certainly don’t want our employees, the employees of Hay River to be in a worse position. We want to make...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. To the Member’s point, I mean, I agree. We provide these dollars. We don’t dictate what program they design. In some cases, regions have actually pooled it with other money to do bigger initiatives. We offer every region $125,000 of the $1 million. Some have better uptake than others. I can give you some breakdown of the 201516 Actuals.

The Akaitcho Territory Government utilized the entire $125,000. The Deh Cho Friendship Centre took $40,000. The Gwich’in Tribal Council got $144,000. The Inuvialuit Regional Corporation got $325,000. The Inuvik Community Corp got $39,000...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, late in the life of the last government, we brought in the new Mental Health Act which is going to go live, I believe in January. Part of the act is the implementation and utilization of something we call assisted community treatment. These positions are going to help us bring that to reality to help provide services that are outlined under the new legislation that didn’t exist under the old legislation.

We believe this is a significant step to move forward to providing better mental health services across the Northwest Territories. These positions, at least one...

Still not 100 per cent sure I understand the question, Mr. Chair. Under the legislation there will be board chairs for each of the regional wellness councils. Those board chairs are going to form the territorial authority, there is one authority. Other members will form regional wellness councils. In the legislation it allows us to basically keep Hay River as they are until such time as we roll them in. As a result, there will be a public administrator who is technically acting in the capacity of chair of the regional wellness council that we’ve established in Hay River, but will still...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The discrepancy is because I jumped back a page. The outofterritorial hospitals, the forced growth doesn’t appear on page 181, but it is included on page 180. This whole area in total did get an increase of about $2 million in those areas, the ones I outlined previously.