Lesa Semmler

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, there's ongoing conversations between my department and Indigenous Service Canada. You know, we need to have an agreement before March 31st as our agreement did expire last March 31st. So that's the work that we're working on right now. And the important piece to understand is that when the new government was -- when they prorogued and then the new government was elected, they didn't resume conversations on a lot of this until after the budget. So we've been in mad meetings with ISC trying to make sure that this agreement is what we need for the Northwest...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I don't have that information. I can -- what I can provide is I can commit to finding out -- I believe it's the counsellor that goes in. But working with Indigenous governments over these last couple of years, there has been established positions within Indigenous governments so I would have to get back to the Member as to the actual communities and who to contact in those communities for case management. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I believe the shortfall for 2023-2024 was $7 million, and the shortfall for 2024-2025 was $13 million. However, I'd just like to add that these two years, we were provided the first time ever a supplementary additional payment on top of what they normally give us, which was a total of $25 million for each year. And previous years before this, as long as we've been administering NIHB, they've never been -- they've never given us that money. So the years before, we could probably calculate $20 million, $25 million on average, that we've been overspending. And with the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the first one opened here in Yellowknife and through their case workers as they come back, you know, if that is -- that is an option. It is a territorial initiative so it's not just for -- so if there's people coming back from treatment and they need to stabilize with a place to stay and some support, their caseworker could work with the transitional housing in Yellowknife that's currently open while they're trying to make arrangements to return back to their home community. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you. What I've directed the NTHSSA to do is to do the mapping, and I think currently right now, that's what they're doing, is looking at what they're going to be monitoring and bringing all of the concerns and the complaints that have come through my offices, BFs, the things that have come through the Office of Client Experience, and then working within the staff to try and navigate. This is the same thing as they did with the Deh Cho journey. They heard from the residents. They heard from the staff. And then they -- part of that was following through different areas with the patient...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, within the health and social services, because of the chronic shortages, what's happening is that there -- just like in an emergency room, every referral that comes in is triaged and those that have -- like, within the speech, you know, if there's swallowing issues, if there's -- you know, type of issues that are higher triage then those ones will be seen sooner. But I would like to say that this is something that the Minister of ECE and myself are working on because it's been raised, and we -- we're currently working on a solution how to utilize, you know...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, under the supportive living review, I am going to be waiting for the health sustainability unit. There will be recommendations coming from that and when I do have that, I will, you know, bring those to my colleagues, and we will also be working with the Regular Members on some of those recommendations that come back. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I became the Minister, there was no -- what was able to be implemented which was -- could be funded from within. There was no new money that came with the recommendations, the recommendations, the report that came forward. So that's -- a lot of times, you know, within many of our departments, they come back with all the things that we need to fix, but it comes with huge amounts of money. We only have through our business processes small amounts of money, and as you see in this budget, we were able to allocate new things or improve things to certain areas that are...

Yes.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, as I can recall from the conversation yesterday that we were starting on this, I don't have all the details. What I do have is that from what was mentioned, we had in the old contract fixed costs that cushioned the price inflation and the volume in the numbers. The new contract had to address the new volumes, inflation, and the contract was based on volumes from ten years ago -- only the contract was based on volumes from ten years ago. So this new contract includes new planes that travel faster, can travel longer distance, less down time for planes and...