Glen Abernethy

Thank you, Madam Chair. There are a couple new positions within this unit. The anti-poverty coordinator position is in this unit. I’m going to go to the deputy minister for the specific details.

Yes, these are grants and contributions going to the health authorities. Then under fees and payments, insured services for non-NWT residents went up $4 million.

Thank you, Madam Chair. According to the report distributed previously, as of October 31, 2013, there were nine vacant positions in the Sahtu. Currently, of those nine positions, six have been filled, two are in competition in progress and there’s still one that needs to be advertised. We haven’t gone out for staffing on that one, or, rather, the Sahtu Health and Social Services Authority is waiting to get that in the queue.

There are O and M dollars associated in some of these program areas; salary is a portion. But for some of the specifics to help explain the accounting behind some of this, I’ll go to Ms. Mathison.

I don’t remember what I said.

On page 8-11 it shows 1,392 positions in the authorities. Those are all established funded positions. The authorities manage their budgets, manage their staff to provide the services that are outlined and they believe they need these positions to do them. I’m not aware of the authorities planning to make any of these positions inactive or to reactivate any other positions, but they may, but that is not the expectation. The expectation is they’ll fill positions and provide the services that are required.

Hold on one second.

Madam Chair, we’re not actually talking about amalgamating boards, we’re talking about creating a central approach, a unified approach to providing health and social services and having shared functions coordinated across all the entities, possibly with a central territorial body that would be more of a virtual organization. It doesn’t really need to be located in one particular area and it could have individuals from what are all the authorities now participating. We’re not talking about amalgamation. We know and we believe, and I believe, that there still needs to be regional entities...

Thank you, Madam Chair. It seems vaguely familiar. I’m pretty sure that’s exactly the same question that Mr. Bromley asked earlier. It’s six positions. If you average them out to about $100,000 per, it’s about $600,000 and we can provide the detail to the Member. We’ll print off Hansard.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. This was an issue that came up in the 16th Assembly and I think additional money was put in so that it established committees throughout the Northwest Territories. I know the department has been eager to establish these starting late in the 16th Assembly and certainly into the beginning of the 17th Assembly, but at the end of the day we don’t have any and there seems to be very little interest or uptake at the community level.

In principle, by intent, the reason these committees were put into the act is absolutely sound, but there’s obviously a disconnect somewhere in our...