Michael Miltenberger

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. At the final analysis, we don’t anticipate there is going to be any money saved, that there’s going to be with the forced growth costs that the Members know are upon this in the social envelope with the annual growth rate up to this year of about 6 or 7 percent in health alone and any efficiencies that are realized, the forced growth in the program area will more than consume any potential efficiencies. Thank you.

For clarity, the answer is that’s where we started. We recognize that with the regional differences and discussion that’s going to ensue, that’s not necessarily where we’re going to end up. It was our starting point. We put it out there. We’ve been looking at if it’s doable and if it’s doable what will it look like. We’ve asked for feedback and we’ve been receiving that. We know that there are other options out there. April is going to take us to the point where we can have that discussion of how we move forward.

Mr. Speaker, the issue of board reform or not is a decision we can make in this House. Decision of board reform, but not 70 to seven but some other configuration is also a decision. We’ve been moving to respond to a priority of the 16th Legislative Assembly. We’ve put forward a concept. We’ve been doing the work to prove it up. April has been determined as a date and the Member will be fully involved in April when we do this review. It’s been indicated that there is a motion coming forward; we’ll be looking to see what that says. It will help clarify the next steps. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Just a few days ago we concluded the health budget. It’s over $300 million; about 25 percent of the territorial budget. This issue of board reform deals with administration, finance, and governance. The health programs and needs that the Member talks about, the requirements for further enhanced services are all issues that are being dealt with through the health budget, through the education budget for education issues, through the housing budget where there are additional funds. What this particular initiative concentrates on is trying to rationalize the governance...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d just like to point out initially that what was played in terms of my first comments this morning were from October 2008, followed at some point later by an interview with myself in Whitehorse. So that may have caused some of the concern for the Member for Great Slave.

The issue of board reform has been identified as a priority of the 16th Legislative Assembly. It has been worked on for over a decade. The social programs area was one that was determined to be, in our opinion, significantly over-governed with 70 boards for health and social services, education, and...

Mr. Speaker, the intent is to facilitate the things we’ve been talking about in this House with case planning, the ability to better coordinate the decision-making, to thin out the financial admin overhead in the governance, to put as much money possible at the program level recognizing that we are always going to be challenged with more needs than our resources. It’s for those reasons that we believe that this board reform will, if done right, improve how services are delivered at the community level. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There are seven weeks left. I have asked them to lay out all the work that we’re going to conclude, the consultations that we’re going to try to undertake in the next seven weeks, taking into consideration as well that we’re going to be in this House until March 13th. We recognize very clearly going forward after April the next phase, once we decide on how we move forward, that there’s going to be more consultation required, probably broader consultation once we get things clarified in terms of general direction.

Mr. Speaker, there has been about a decade or so of work: Strength at Two Levels; the Cuff report; the Deloitte Touche report on governance, on boards; the work done by the Boards and Agencies committee; the recommendations for a whole host of different approaches to how we deliver services in the regions. We looked at all that. All that was there. It’s all documented. There are hundreds of thousands of dollars going back to the last century with the Minister of the time -- I believe it was Minister Ng -- started with a $400,000 report. Over the last 10 years I would suggest we probably spent...

Going forward from April those questions would have to be discussed. The whole issue of all the work done to cost out some of the Collective Agreement issues, pension issues, would have to be looked at. The discussion about the concept and if that’s not the right concept what is the plan, there are a number of significant issues that would have to be addressed going forward. April is just one of the first milestone dates. We had given ourselves to 2010-2011 to work through the planning, design, and implementation. After April we will be looking at those decisions and further consultations.

Mr. Speaker, I would suggest that the clientele for housing, education and health are very common. We have small communities where, for example, the predominant form of accommodation in the smaller communities is housing. We know -- I know from personal experience, having worked in Health and Social Services -- that when there are health issues or social service issues there tends to be a related housing issue. If there are troubles in school, if there’s not enough food on the table, if there’s alcohol abuse in the home, if there’s FASD, that these services link. Our intent was to be able to...