Michael Miltenberger

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, the coming into force date is September 2006. Once this bill receives third reading and is given assent, we will be working with the Health and Social Services authorities to make sure that we inform all of the communities and all the involved people. There have been meetings with environmental health officers. There are going to be more in terms of how they are going to do the work. We are going to be communicating with all of the businesses. We are going to be working in conjunction with and trying to be as cooperative with the WCB as possible with...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The third-party accountability framework is designed to be able to recognize the work of NGOs. The health authorities, the DEAs are considered employees. They have collective agreements. They are part of our budgeting process. NGOs currently, in terms of when it comes to forced growth and other issues, are not. This third-party accountability was designed specifically due to the recognition of the fact by the government that this is an area that we would have to be able to better define so that we can address appropriately. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The intent is to do the groundwork and give everyone lead time to know this is coming and we’re looking at a coming into force date of September 2006, which is a few months. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, this issue is one where there has not been consistency in the past. My account for not being aware of this information is due to, in all probability, my memory and not being aware of that particular detail. I do know that there is no annual increase to NGOs that are built in as forced growth. I know that the concern from women’s shelters, from every other organization that I have talked to, has been that often their budgets have been pegged at a certain level as they haven’t seen any increases for salaries, cost of doing business or anything. In this...

Yes, Mr. Chairman.

Yes, Mr. Chairman. When you see the information, it might ring a bell because it was put in all our business plans through the years as we developed the work, but we'll get that information for committee. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I can't add anything further at this point, but we'll get the information that committee requested.

Yes, Mr. Chairman, I'll make sure we forward the information to the chair of Social Programs for her perusal.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Back in the year 2000 there was a fund agreed to at the First Ministers of Health meetings under their primary health care transition fund. About $4.7 million was our share and there were 11 projects that were developed across the North. The program took a long time to unfold. One of the projects that was agreed to was to look at how do we advance our primary health care model, which would allow us to integrate our services at the community level with the nurse practitioners and the doctors and the nurses. Back then the plan was to do some modifications to the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate and note the Member's concern, and I want to assure the Member that we work every day to try to make sure we provide the highest level of service possible. When there are circumstances that happen where the systems may not have worked appropriately, we backtrack on those and we try to take the steps necessary to make sure that, in fact, services are provided. I would like to point out that, yes, there are times when things don't work and those are unfortunate, but the vast majority of time, medical travel works in a good, efficient way. But in the cases...