Health and Social Services Minister Glenn Hart didn't want to talk about Auditor General Sheila Fraser's blunt assessment of his department's shortcomings, but opposition leaders had plenty to say.

Liberal Leader Arthur Mitchell said Fraser's performance audit of health services and programs, released Tuesday and tabled in the legislative assembly, shows that we're not getting value for the money.

"This is fairly damning,” Mitchell said today of the audit's findings.

"They're not documenting their most important priorities, and though we do report some qualitative data, not with respect to how the department achieves its goals.

"So we're spending a quarter-billion dollars and we don't even know what our priorities are.”

The Liberal leader was quick to qualify his criticisms as directed toward the government, not officials or health care providers.

"It's not that we're not getting good health care, it's that we're not getting good value for the money we're spending,” he told the Star.

And Mitchell pointed to the department's response to Fraser's recommendation that Health and Social Services develop a comprehensive information system to accurately collect and report health data.

While the department agrees with Fraser, it responds that it lacks the necessary resources to follow through.

"That's a political issue,” charged Mitchell. "Why has the government for the past nine years not provided those resources? If you don't have a roadmap or a chart and if you don't know where you've been, how do you know where you're going?”

NDP Leader Liz Hanson said today the report speaks to larger problems with the current Yukon Party government.

"Fraser's talking about Health and Social Services, but in my mind (her findings) are a symptom of the whole government,” Hanson said.

"When I responded to Premier (Dennis) Fentie, who's also the Finance minister, about the need to plan your spending, have some strategic vision of where you're going, and clearly this is what Fraser's saying.

"In Health and Social Services, it's set out a whole series of potentially connected initiatives, but hasn't connected the dots,” Hanson said. She was referencing the performance audit's findings of a lack of evaluations and performance measurements for the alcohol and drug services programs.

Hanson said Fraser's audit points to a lack of vision. Though it noted Health and Social Services' development of a process for measuring indicators and objectives, "I would give credit to the department for that, rather than the government.”

The NDP leader also said it was unfortunate the same due diligence in determining that Whitehorse General Hospital would operate an MRI program wasn't employed before it was decided to build new hospitals in Watson Lake and Dawson City.

"There was not a business case made by the Yukon Hospital Corporation on what studies they based their decision to go with this model,” Hanson said.

"I hesitate to focus on that, but there was absolutely no risk analysis done in trying to replicate, in miniature in those communities, a lot of the functions carried out at Whitehorse General.”