Alfred Moses

Under the territorial health services division, and particularly with home care and home care with seniors and people with disabilities going into some of the communities, I know in Inuvik the home care staff do a great job of getting out to the communities, but they are being overworked in a sense to try to keep up to the demand of home care needs. I’m sure it’s similar in some other communities or smaller communities that might not even have the home care provided.

In terms of Inuvik specifically, does the Minister know if there is a need to increase the home care, either possibly a half PY...

No, that’s a great idea to check with the authority, because I think a BiliBlanket only costs about $4,000, and then if another infant is born with jaundice and they need to be medevacced to Yellowknife, you just have to do the cost of what it costs for a medevac and everybody to come here to just get the baby wrapped in a blanket when it could be preventative measures and investing in, you know, prevention of these babies that have jaundice and, you know, jaundice is pretty dangerous to a child’s health.

With that said, are there any BiliBlankets or phototherapy in the small communities, in...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to table two documents today. One is the policy statement from the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada. It is a policy statement, entitled Returning Birth to Aboriginal, Rural and Remote Communities. I also have a report here from the same organization. This one is entitled A Report on Best Practices for Returning Birth to Rural and Remote Aboriginal Communities. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Sorry, Mr. Chair, Mr. Bromley asked the questions that I was going to ask. Thank you.

I did make reference to reports, but I didn’t ask the question specifically on the reports. I asked the question: Is the Minister willing to work with these NGOs that are providing good services and programs on a very stretched dollar? Would he be willing to work with them, provide funding dollars so they can provide more adequate and appropriate services for those people that are in need in the regional centres, here in Yellowknife, and doing the work in the NWT? Would he commit to working with the NGOs… Not work with them, support them financially so they can provide the services. I’m not...

How about the regulations? The Minister said he was going to change some of the standards earlier, in the discussions earlier today. I think that is going to have an effect on regulations. And when it has an effect on regulations, there’s going to be something in there that’s going to have an effect on the act. I just want to get confirmation if the Minister feels there’s going to be also some changes needed to be put to those regulations.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I had some questions that I wanted to address in terms of one of our priorities in the 17th Legislative Assembly, and that deals with investing in prevention and education and also enhancing our addiction treatment programs. Really, we only have one treatment program in the Northwest Territories and that’s on the K’atlodeeche First Nation Reserve. I wanted to talk to the Minister in terms of what he is doing, just get an update of where we are in enhancing those treatment programs, and also looking at existing infrastructure in the Northwest Territories that will be...

Also for clarification, the Minister had mentioned managing risks, and he made reference to it on more than one occasion. I just want to get clarity on what the Minister means when he says managing risks. In terms of the Midwifery Program, residents of the NWT, the report, all the stakeholders made a recommendation that the community-based model is the most recommended model that we should be moving forward with. They didn’t ask for a consultant. They asked for a community-based model. I want to know what these risks are that the Minister is talking about.

Just continuing on, the Minister mentioned that these standards were made for a community recommendation, and the recommended model that was based out of the midwifery report specifically asks for community-based models. That’s what we’re trying to get started up in Hay River, on-the-ground running. We have the standards.

With that said, can I ask the Minister what standards are the midwives in Fort Smith using right now? If these need to be revised, and it’s a successful program in Smith, and we’re going to support it, what standards are they using in Smith, and why do we have to revise if it...

I think it was during general comments that I made some comments towards the Health Promotion Fund and asked about multi-year funding. The Minister did confirm that there was multi-year funding with no cap on the years that a certain organization can continue to get that funding, and if it is a successful program, it would possibly turn into core programming dollars to fund the successful program. In terms of the Health Promotion Fund, if it hasn’t increased and we do get the same organizations utilizing the same dollars for successful programs, that doesn’t free up any new dollars for any...