Julian Morse

Thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you for those answers. So maybe I'll turn to some of the targets in the business plan. And just want to say, you know, I do appreciate that they've established targets. This is something that I raised during the last review. I guess my comment now is, you know, the targets are still -- I guess vague isn't the right word. But I'll give an example.

So our target for implementation of the post -- for post-secondary is to increase post-secondary students from 569. So having a target like that means that we will achieve our goal if we have 570 students in post...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Sorry, I wave off my wave.

Thank you, Madam Chair. And, I mean, I guess what I would say in response to that is that the difficulty is -- I'm not necessarily looking for documents per se. I don't think that staff time is necessarily best spent kind of just producing plans and reports all the time, but the problem is that if we don't know what we're trying to achieve, it's very hard to define for the people trying to achieve it what success is going to look like and what they should be working towards. So I guess I've got to come up with some Member's statements to talk about this a bit more because -- but the bottom...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Just give me a sec here to find -- okay. Yeah, I just wanted to note that there doesn't appear to be any substantial growth in this area of the budget, the labour development and standards area generally. However, a number of goals in the business plan, and certainly the mandate of this government, speaks to increasing workforce, and I could go through the process of listing off a bunch but I'll ask questions about business planning in a sec.

Can I just ask the high level question first, you know, how is this division supporting the priorities of this mandate...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. And so I mean fundamentally speaking, do we have a plan related to this mandate item? Like, do we have -- how do I say this. I mean, are we measuring our northern workforce, determining what is preventing it from growing, and implementing a targeted plan to grow it? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you for all those answers, explaining those various adjustments in there.

The next question is can the Minister explain what progress has been made in investigating the feasibility of adding an Office of the Practitioner Experience?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I assume this is as good a place as any to be asking business plan related questions; can I confirm that?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Okay, so to be clear, no reduction in service there.

Similarly, population and public health services, there's a $1.2 million cut. Is there a service cut associated with that? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Can the Minister answer the question maybe a little bit more directly, just have we actually saved money? Has the program achieved what it was seeking out to do? I mean, the department gave MLAs a bunch of different reasons why this change was needed. I'm just curious if we've actually achieved a change, or if we're spending the same amount of money, we seem to be covering a few new people but less overall. I'm having a hard time understanding kind of what benefits have come from the change. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Maybe the Minister could help enlighten me as to how we come up with money for something that is unfunded and if we are coming up with that money, why on earth are we not simply just putting it in the budget? Thank you.