Alfred Moses

That action plan was developed February 2008 and a lot has changed in the last seven years, and I appreciate the Minister working with the Persons with Disabilities Council to look at modernizing this and see how we can take better steps in working with the Council and with individuals.

The next one is in terms of home care support and whether or not we’re providing our home care staff in the communities and in the regional centres… I know we have, I think, when I was working with public health, we only had one home care support worker, and to deal with a community of over 3,000 at the time was...

I do appreciate that. I think it will give us an indication of how well we as a government are doing for employees out in the workforce.

I mentioned that on November 25, 2014, the Mental Health Commission of Canada released the implementation guide for psychological health and safety workplace standards. This is the first time something like this has ever been done.

Is the Minister familiar with that program or that the release had happened last November and whether his department is looking into that type of implementation program as something we can build on here in the Northwest Territories...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I guess this is a big piece of the Health and Social Services in terms of programs and services that we provide to residents and also supporting our not-for-profit organizations. I guess the first question that I do have is about a year ago, yes, just over a year ago we tabled the Early Childhood Development Action Plan in the House here, and it was a combination between Education, Culture and Employment and Health and Social Services. When you look at the action items, the Department of Health and Social Services was accountable for 14 of those action items. With a year...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. When we talk about mental health, there are so many branches and so many different avenues we can take in addressing and talking about this very, very harmful disease. What I want to talk about today is some of the work that’s been done with the Mental Health Commission of Canada.

Last year, November 25th, the Mental Health Commission of Canada released a comprehensive implementation guide to help Canadian employers fully adopt the national standard of Canada for psychological health and safety in the workplace, something that is needed. This implementation guide is...

I think the next question that I have in line deals with the ambulatory care services. On a couple of occasions during my term, we have had infants that were born in the Beaufort-Delta in the Inuvik Regional Hospital that were born with jaundice. I’ve asked twice in this House about BiliBlankets. I believe they only have one at the Inuvik Hospital. Should two babies that are born with jaundice happen to be born at the same time, one will be able to get the phototherapy that they need with the blanket, but the other one we’d have to send out on a medevac and those are thousands and thousands of...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Just following up in some of the areas that Mr. Dolynny was speaking to in terms of services outside the NWT. Has a study been done or do we have data showing what our most frequent visits are or services that are being provided from Alberta, for instance, to our residents? In terms of cost efficiency, do we have the opportunity to see where we’re spending all those dollars and rather than continue to spend those dollars and send our services down south, that it would be more appropriate if we purchased a piece of equipment and take it somewhere, say, centrally located...

I’m glad the Minister talked about the indicators. The questions that I asked the Minister of Human Resources earlier during question period was some of these areas of undue stress and the amount that our Employee and Family Assistance Program is being utilized. Would the department look at these type of indicators to see which departments in either of the authorities we might be seeing some of our employees taking stress leave or taking mental health stress leave and see which areas we need to provide more services for our employees in that area? I know it could be because of management. It...

Just in terms of the Anti-Poverty Strategy, I just want to commend the Minister for the work he’s been doing in that and also thank him for allowing standing committee to come to the last round table and meet with the representatives. I think members of the standing committee were really appreciative to see the work that’s been going into that. Just more of a comment and no more questions.

Thank you, Madam Chair I have questions along similar lines with the deficits and the accumulated deficits. Just listening to the Minister respond to Ms. Bisaro’s questions, I guess as we’re moving towards one authority, how is the department going to work in terms of the accumulated deficits? When you look at the public accounts records, we have Stanton accumulated at over $15 million and the Beaufort-Delta, which did a good job last year, they had a surplus, finally, after a long time, but this year they have another deficit of about $2.5 million and now it’s accumulated back up to almost $8...

More of a comment in terms of when we get into the smaller communities that’s where we start to tend to see some of the higher health risks, higher rates of some of our health indicators as well as educational indicators, and I think that if we had somebody staffed in there that can deal with some of the care and treatment but also on the prevention and promotion and education awareness side, I think we could really tackle some of those high rates that we see in the small communities and bring them down so that we start having more healthy and educated people in the small communities and not...