Glen Abernethy

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, the elimination of that position is part of the reduction exercise. The position was vacant and has been vacant for some time.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, all departments either have them or are developing them, and I can't tell you the exact number of the variance, which ones are done and which ones are still in process. I will commit to getting that information and sharing it with the committee.

As I indicated, at this time we don't actually have any recommendations from the committee. The membership on that steering committee does include the NWT Pharmacy Association, and we already collaborate with pharmacists across the territories on a number of initiatives. They are a critical and a key component to making this a reality here in the Northwest Territories. We will continue to consult and work in collaboration with the pharmacies across the Northwest Territories to ensure that a program, when it is put in place, is both effective, efficient, and responsive to the needs of both...

I'm going to go to Michelle on this one for the detail. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, the budget in the area was reduced to reflect historical expenditures, what we actually spend in that area. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

No, we have not. Technically, they are outside the public service. They have their own collective agreement; they have their own terms and conditions of employment. I'm happy to reach out to Hay River. I'll talk to the public administrator to see how they're proceeding with summer student hires. If they want access to our database, I'm certainly happy to allow them access to our database.

We do have the strategic plan, the 20/20, for the Government of the Northwest Territories, which is focused on building a public service that is responsive, respectful, but also representative of the population we serve. I will commit to working with each of the departments to try to find priorities and activities we can do within the individual departments. As far as individual human resources plans, I believe much of that work is already begun, or has existed in the past. We will look to see if we can revitalize any of that, but also need to focus in on: what is it really going to take to...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, this is going to sound like a really repetitive answer, but in this particular area we really dug deep into the department trying to figure out what we're actually spending, and compare it to what our budgets were, and realign our budgets with actual expenditures rather than historic budgets. And this is one of the areas that, you know, we felt we needed to align in order to capture the fact that some of the fees and payments that we're making out there with respect to some of our software, our human-resource-specific software, have escalated and changed over...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. If you look onto page 213 you'll also notice that there's a position reduction within the directorate, and one of the positions that was eliminated was the assistant deputy minister of Human Resources. Some of those costs are directly related to the reduction of that position.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. It's a good question. I couldn't say 100 per cent what the reason is. But I can say that in all the other community and region numbers they do include numbers for Health and Social Services. Whereas, in Hay River and Hay River Reserve, they don't because the Hay River Authority currently is outside the public service. They're bound by the same terms and conditions of our collective agreement and, I mean, we don't crack their summer student hires, so we have no numbers here for any summer students being hired within the Hay River Health and Social Services Authority. That...