Sandy Lee

Thank you. On the first point, we are compiling documents to respond to the various commitments that we’ve made over yesterday and today and we will get it to the Members as soon as possible. I mean within hours and days here as the staff put it together.

I know that the Member has mentioned many a time about me coming to the standing committee with a document that showed that we were going to reduce the deficit at Stanton to zero. Honestly I cannot see how that kind of document could have been possible. I am aware that we had many, many discussions, because, as the Member has referred to a...

Mr. Speaker, this is an across-the-department approach and our director of policy is part of the steering committee. We provide our input, our expertise, our information into that group and obviously being involved in the...and the response and coming up with this response to the workshops and conferences and the interest that the Members in this House as well as the public have indicated to us as to the need to come up with this strategy. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As I indicated, we’ve completed our internal work. We would like to get them out to the public. I’m just wanting to let everybody know that the framework within which we’ve been working on is the recommendations from the Joint Working Group report. At this point, having heard what we have heard, we are not anticipating coming out with a whole new policy or making sweeping changes. What we are trying to do is do what we can within the existing policy framework and to try to accommodate some of the recommendations that were brought up by the Joint Working Group. I...

I’m not sure if it’s something that we could be speaking about here, but I’ll be happy to get the Member details privately.

Yes, I have. We have had the CFSA recommendations since October. My department and I went through the report, we reviewed them and we came up with every possible way of implementing as many recommendations as possible. There are some items that are big ticket items and we needed to put that into the next business cycle.

Having said that, I understand that the Members would like us to relook at it. I think it’s really important for all the Members here to have the full information about what re-profiling means, a $12 million item. My department is working right now to give the information to all...

It will be in the context of working with the recommendations from the Joint Working Group report, which is out there in the public. So we are responding to the direction from the Legislature by way of that committee report. Thank you.

I don’t believe there is a clear rule that says you can’t, but the authorities are block funded with guidelines on what the money is supposed to be spent on. There is room for flexibility as long as we make the case for it and go back to FMB.

We do that already, Mr. Speaker. For example, we have been working very closely with the Gwich’in Tribal Council as well as the IRC. We have given them funding and we are working in partnership on addictions and after-care issues. We are looking at some projects in that area to come up with on-the-ground addiction programs.

I realize that we have eight regions and many, many Aboriginal governments. I could list some of the projects that we are working on, but I just want to let the Member know that we do a lot of work in partnership with Aboriginal organizations and Aboriginal governments...

Mr. Chairman, on this issue, I am following the process that we have set for ourselves within this Legislature. As the Member knows, we had a Joint Working Group on this issue, released a report last fall. The department had a chance to review those and to work on them. We are consulting with the standing committee as we are expected to do. We have received feedback on that and the next stage is for the Cabinet to look at it, and that would include a communication strategy as well as making sure that our public is informed of what we are proposing or what the recommendations were coming out of...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As a Member of FMB as well as Minister of Health and Social Services, I need to say that nobody is getting in the way of making decisions about this sort of thing. We know, Mr. Chairman, that health care costs in the budget is the largest item in the government’s budget. We work hard to be efficient and use our resources wisely and as FMB we have given directions to authorities and departments to make sure that the money is spent for what it’s meant to do. That balances with the need for our system to respond. So I work with the Joint Leadership Council, the chairs of...