Alfred Moses

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to recognize a wonderful constituency assistant, Maia Lepage, who is also here chaperoning two of our Pages for the week. She is doing double duty this week.

At this time I would also like to recognize Mr. Ernie Bernhardt, who has been an ambassador, innovator and teacher of arctic sports throughout the circumpolar region of the world.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Last summer I was very fortunate to attend a Relay for Life here in Yellowknife and I ended up walking for a bit there. While I was walking for the cause, I ended up upon this booth where we had some volunteers that were looking to sign up volunteers for donations of stem cell donors. I was very fortunate. I did the cheek swab and got my name into the database.

About a week later, it was very coincidental, but I ran into a nurse who had asked me if the NWT was doing anything in terms of stem cell research or stem cell donor campaigns, mainly because there was a young...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So the awarded contract to the Charlotte Vehus was $1.459 million and the Beaufort-Delta Health and Social Services Authority was the authority running specific programs for the Charlotte Vehus Home, or was it Charlotte Vehus running those programs and Beaufort-Delta covered them up, and now that Beaufort-Delta is in debt because they were kind of supplementing the Charlotte Vehus Home when Charlotte… Can I just get that clarity?

Thank you. In regard to the Charlotte Vehus Home, that was Parkland services, I believe, that was running that program. For somebody to run that program for the amount of years that they have, you’d think that the contractor would bid his contracts based on previous years’ expenditures, and now they’re coming back to us for over half a million dollars. I can see maybe $100,000, but coming back for over half a million dollars to continue to run the same programs and services that they’ve done for years doesn’t make sense to me. Now we’re awarding them a contract where they’ve actually come back...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. If anybody remembers, this was a big issue that we brought up when the contract was actually being awarded, and it went out for tender and we had two contractors come back with bids, and we had a northern contractor and a southern contractor. There was a lot of mix-up. The northern contractor initially won the bid, then he ended up losing out because of the Business Incentive Policy that the NWT promotes and somehow the southern contractor won this bid.

What we have before us now is that this southern contractor is coming back to this government and asking for an extra...

Obviously, there are organizations in the Northwest Territories who are giving this type of awareness campaign. Would the Minister and his department commit to supporting these organizations, finding out who these organizations are and supporting them either financially or through human resources to get this education out to people of the Northwest Territories, so that should one of our residents need this type of donor request, that it’s there for them? Will the Minister commit to offering that support?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m going to follow up to my Member’s statement, in terms of stem cell donor campaigns and awareness. I want to ask the Minister of Health and Social Services if the Minister is familiar with this program, and if so, is his department currently doing any type of programs that are similar in the Northwest Territories that they’re doing in other jurisdictions throughout Canada?

As I was saying, as it currently stands in Canada’s base for stem cell donors, there are 76 percent for Caucasians, 24 percent for ethnicities, and of those 24 percent for ethnicities only 0.9 percent are Aboriginal donors. That means if we have anybody that needs stem cells and is Aboriginal, it’s going to be very hard for them to find a donor.

Right now there is a special need for ethnic males in the ages 17 to 35.

Later today I will have questions for the Minister of Health and Social Services to see what this territory is doing to help close that need for this type of help.

I guess my next final question is: Why hadn’t the authority or department noticed this back when it started, when we first started getting our deficits and addressed it then, rather than addressing it now? Especially this year when we had this big controversy with the contracts. Why did the department not catch this ahead of time and adjust it then, instead of continuing to put this authority and government further and further in debt?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The Minister mentioned a base adjustment to the programs and specifically the contractor who’s taking care of the Charlotte Vehus Home and the Billy Moore Assisted Living Group Home. Can he give me a percentage on the base adjustments of the overall contract and what were the possible final numbers or where I can find the final numbers in both contracts that were, I guess, admitted?