Glen Abernethy

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, these changes came into place during the last main estimates process. What we were trying to do is to align how we report all of our finances within our authorities to be consistent with CIHI reporting. Ambulatory care is one of the areas that we were required to report on, but we didn’t always align those financially. They were all spread out in different areas. Last main estimates, we’ve brought everything in line; all the authorities report on the same criteria, and the department now reports to the same criteria to be compliant with CIHI and a few of the...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, we do have a historical relationship pre-division where the residents of the Kitikmeot did come to Yellowknife for services, they were providing things like CT scans and some of the specialty clinics. That relationship has carried on. We have a relationship with Alberta, for services that aren’t provided in the Northwest Territories, we go to Alberta. For Nunavut, for services that aren’t provided in Nunavut, they come to us, and if we don’t provide them they also go to Edmonton or Alberta.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I anticipate to give the MLAs a heads up hopefully by the end of this week, and after that, we will notify the successful candidates, two, three weeks.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, we do have the NWT Helpline. It’s available 247 for individuals who are struggling, regardless of where you are in the Northwest Territories.

The Hay River employees are actually outside of the public service. They have their own human resource manual, they have their own collective agreement, they have their own pension plan. They aren’t part of Superann because they are outside of the public service. Every year the employees pay into their pension, but the pension also pays out people who have retired. In order to ensure that they are fluid, that they are a viable pension plan, they end up having to come back and ask for additional money every year, and this has gone on for a long time. I remember back in 2005 when I was working...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, as I’ve indicated, I’m hoping to bring forward legislation for first and second reading during this sitting, at which point it will be in committee’s hands for 120 days, which means the earliest it will be able to be in front of the legislature for third reading would be the fall sitting. If passed, and I stress if passed, then we will have to identify an appropriate implementation date that gives us time to actually change our system so that we can utilize the different fonts that exist within our Official Languages Act, the 11 official languages, so that we...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, these are based on utilization over time. We did have a bit of a spike a couple years ago, especially in 2015-16. Based on our sort of average utilization, where we’ve put forward the $8 million, which is fairly consistent with previous years, there has been some change in utilization.

Yes, absolutely, Mr. Chair. August 1st is still the golive date, but I want to be very clear that this is a date in a process, in a timeline. As we move forward, we go live. There is still going to be some changes, some evolution that’s happening at the regional and community level as we’re formulizing and making this new relationship a reality. I anticipate there will be some growing pains. I anticipate that it will take a couple years to really roll things all the way out to make sure that we’re getting all the benefits of a single unified collaborative system, but the boards, the wellness...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, yes, it falls under this area. You’d find some of it under community mental health and addictions, health promotion and community wellness. It’s certainly within this area.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, our main estimates are only slightly down from last year. We had some revised mainstream in the last fiscal year as a result of some cost pressures. Much of this is a result of the pension top up that we have to provide to Hay River. We imagine that there will likely be a supp again during this fiscal year once they’re able to quantify what they’re pension top up might need to be to keep Hay River’s pension viable.