Michael Miltenberger

Thank you. The communities coming down the valley are all going to have a direct fibre link or a microwave link and just about every community that I can think of has the capacity to do telehealth and the schools are all hooked up. What they don’t have is the bandwidth to be able to do it properly. So now we’re going to marry up the fact that we have the infrastructure with the capacity to, in fact, allow them to use telehealth to its full capacity, that students can log on to their computers and do work and not wait half an hour to get on. What’s going to be important in terms of...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This whole initiative has been one of acceleration that the federal government and other countries were very interested when we started talking about this project in the last government and they were giving us a lot of verbal support. As we move forward through the last government, late in the last government, but this government where we worked with the Assembly and we ramped up our interest and we’ve moved this project from the political debate to the approval of the money and project design to, as the Member said, the actual start-up of the installation and the fibre...

The first year has been a planning year and we’ve been working with industry and we are looking at changes to the procedures. For example, in Human Resources, where we want to be able to go south to job fairs or recruiting, that we’re going to empower the folks that go down there to look at the resumes and do interviews. If the people meet the criteria, then a conditional job offer can be made pending the checking of references. That’s as opposed to the current process where we have to come back and months go by and people wander away. That’s one thing.

We are expecting and the Minister of ECE...

Mr. Speaker, I give notice that on Monday, February 9, 2015, I will move that Bill 44, An Act to Amend the Hospital Insurance and Health and Social Services Administration Act, be read for the first time. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It’s still in planning, but it will be at least two positions.

I’ll get that detailed information for the Member. Thank you.

I would just like to clarify for the record for my young colleague for Yellowknife Centre, that a point of fact is when supplementary appropriations are voted on, we do see them, we see them visible all around us. They help us provide services to adults down south for health. They help fund projects. They help move money forward in the budget, so we can do the Tuk-Inuvik highway. Every cent that we put into supplementary appropriations and approve in this House is visible and brings added value to the Northwest Territories.

With regard to the Members, if there’s a wish, we can pull together an...

When they are asked to be involved or they are involved, they work with the host department or agency and they look at being efficient, not necessarily to save money but to make sure that they are designed in such a way to put the money they do have to the best, most efficient and effective use, and that’s one of the functions they provide. They provide a coordinating function; they provide a function where they can link in and get the people they may need to help work with the departments, to do the detailed planning in terms of the effectiveness of the design, the horizontal and vertical...

Everything that’s funded by GNWT money, I believe, has to be considered. We talked about leaving no stone unturned. That doesn’t matter if it’s the Power Corp, the health boards, divisional boards, housing folks. It doesn’t matter. We have to make sure that we manage all the money. This body votes on every penny that runs those 5,000 employees, all our boards, agencies and our own government departments, so we have to look at them all. As the Member asked, are all options on the table, and the answer is, once again, yes.

That issue was flagged in the budget address as well. We do a significant number of things already. We are putting some money in this budget to try to extend the staffing complements in Yellowknife, Simpson and, I believe, Fort Smith for starters. But we want to and we already do a number of things for seniors.

I appreciate the Member’s concern and we are intending on looking at those longer term changes, as well, that we need to deal with as this bubble moves through their lifecycle.

The actuarial tables may have the average person living to 89 for men, for example. The folks, if you do it...