Sandy Lee

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member is right; I had responded to him on this issue on November 12th last year. There were specific personnel details involved with this position that made it difficult to fill the position at that time, but it has been three months since. I would be happy to undertake to see where we are at and get back to him. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I can tell you that we are intimately involved with giving financial advice and interaction with the authority. I think a large part of the time that the director of finance sitting next to me is spent on working on financial issues. As well, this government and this Cabinet directed the department and the authorities to provide detailed financial information, more detailed than ever before, and, lastly, we have undertaken a step where we have now a financial contribution agreement with authorities that lays out in detail the financial expectations of each authority...

I don’t know if we have had specific requests or information seeking that position, but I could undertake to try to get some stats on what kind of feedback we have received on practicenorth.ca website. Thank you.

The Foundation for Change is an action plan that requires direction and intent and spirit. I say again, Children and Family Services Act review of the standing committee we agree with the recommendations. We support the recommendations. We have agreed to implement 61 out of 73 recommendations. The 10 that we’re not able to, the exact way that the committee has recommended, we say in our reply how we are going to go about them.

As I said, I realize it’s not the answer that the Member is looking for, but we see nothing in the recommendations from the report that’s not in line with what the...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. That money was put in in anticipation of changes and, as the Member knows, we are discussing making some changes and we will need the resources still.

Thank you, not only as the Minister of Health and Social Services but as his colleague and what I consider to be his friend, I would not want to do anything to raise his heart rate or temperature.

Seriously, on the social worker situation, the last I was aware of it from our visits, there were some personal things like, the Member mentioned housing, but I believe one of the workers were in a relationship with somebody in Norman Wells. We live in a small town where personal backgrounds could determine where one who’s hired could decide to leave and such. What I would like to do is, I haven’t had...

As would be the case with other positions, we would use locums to fill those positions as there are no permanent ones. Thank you.

I don’t believe that was a month ago. I think it was January 14th or 19th. We are working on the details the Member asked for and it’s in my office, it’s about 50 pages long. I’d be happy to get the document to the Member as soon as possible. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. That’s a very, very broad question that could lead to a very broad discussion. Let me just say that with respect to extended health benefits, we do not use the language “supplementary health benefits” anymore because that policy has been rescinded. We are following the guidelines of the Joint Working Group. We have been having discussions with the standing committee and we are working on making some changes that would follow the Joint Working Group recommendation. So basically until something is changed, the status quo remains.

The Member is asking how that impacts the...

As the Member stated, this is a very important area and it will become more important as we move forward. NWT actually is at the forefront of rolling out programs and using the information technology. We are sort of a model student under Canada Infoway funding and being able to tap into those.

As the Member stated, bandwidth is a problem, it is a challenge in the NWT, as it is for the rest of the country. We do appreciate the support of the standing committee and the enthusiasm they’ve shown. Our department works with other departments and DPW and Education as we plan as a government on how we...