Glen Abernethy

Thank you, Madam Chair. When I was responding to opening comments from Members, I talked about some of the things that were happening. There is no intention to downsize staff in communities or regions with respect to any of the work that’s going on trying to provide a more streamlined approach for our residents. So there is no intention of downsizing any of the positions in any communities or regions in the Northwest Territories.

Thanks, Madam Chair. The GNWT’s response to the Anti-Poverty Framework is what is before us today and we have a response based on activities that we can do that fall under our mandate to combat poverty here in the Northwest Territories. So, things related to Health and Social Services, Education, Culture and Employment, Housing and the other departments that are participating. The next step is to develop the territorial action plan where all partners will identify the types of things they’re going to be doing to combat poverty. To support the work that other organizations and governments are...

So, just so I’m clear, what you’re asking is: How many residents of the Northwest Territories do not have third-party employer-provided types of insurance or other supplementary insurances like NIHB? Am I correct?

I remember this because I was involved in it the last time. The last time we were pursuing it, in 2005, we had to write all new job descriptions to make them consistent with the GNWT format. We had to get them all evaluated and consistent with our form of evaluation, the Hay method of evaluation. Then we were getting ready to move forward with the next step, which would be to terminate their employment with the Hay River authority and offer them employment with the new GNWT Hay River authority. Then we’d have to make sure that all of them would have the opportunity to go through the process...

The provision of dental services for Aboriginal children is actually the responsibility of the federal government and we’re looking at finding ways to encourage the federal government to invest more money in this particular area. We do care very much about our youth. We recognize, without question, that oral health impacts overall health and we will continue to do things to address those issues. But we need to plan and we need to figure out what the best programs to put in place are, and we will continue to move forward to develop a plan that will help us address oral health across the...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We will provide some of that deficit information. Also, recognize that these dollars that you see here are not necessarily the only dollars that the authorities are getting. They’re also getting additional revenue from other sources. We can provide some additional clarity around that as well.

Yes, Madam Chair.

Thank you. We have put these dollars in based on the actions in the plan. There aren’t any additional dollars at this point for ’14-15 and any dollars that come in the future will certainly be discussed and debated through the business planning process and future budgets.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Based on numbers that we’ve had in the past, we know that it is estimated that about 10 percent of NWT residents have no access to supplementary health benefit coverage. So that means the rest – 90 percent – have coverage of some capacity, whether it’s through private insurance, extended health benefits, NIHB, but about 10 percent don’t have this type of coverage.

It’s not an easy task, unfortunately. Because we’re talking about pensions and every authority is running on a… Sorry, that authority is running on a different pension system. We’re pretty much going to have to do a manual calculation on every employee to figure out what those costs would be and what it would cost to bring over. We should be able to get it done by the end of the upcoming fiscal year, but it is going to take a bit of time to do a thorough, comprehensive analysis. Thank you.