Glen Abernethy

Mr. Speaker, to date, or currently, there is 21 established specialty positions located in Stanton, 16 of those are filled by resident physicians. On top of that, we have a number of unfunded physician specialists who come in from time to time. There isn’t enough demand to justify a full-time specialty in some areas. So we have some locums who come up on a regular basis, as well as the 21 that we've established.

Mr. Speaker, as I indicated we're currently hiring an individual to do our transition planning. We're trying to get somebody local; somebody from Norman Wells. Once that individual is hired, we hope to begin the development of a plan moving forward. It does involve multiple bodies, many departments, but I'm happy to have a sit down with the Member to go through how we plan to move into that building over the next number of months.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, as the Member knows, with the building of the new health centre in Norman Wells, we are also adding a long-term care facility, an 18-bed long-term care facility. This is the first long-term care facility in the Sahtu and we're very excited about opening it. However, it is going to require a large number of new positions to be established in the Sahtu. To date, we have worked with SSI and the Inuvialuit Aurora College to do some training of some local individuals that did occur in Inuvik on resident care aid training, so that we could start getting some...

Mr. Speaker, I think this government has demonstrated an ability to get work done on a fairly regular basis, especially when issues that we have not necessarily been the lead on bringing to reality have come forward, things like medical assistance in dying, a federal initiative that resulted in a significant amount of work being done by the Department of Health and Social Services and the Government of the Northwest Territories. When this legislation comes down, we will do our due diligence, we will collect the data, and we will make sure that NWT residents aren't adversely affected by those...

Mr. Speaker, within the Government of the Northwest Territories the Department of Justice is the lead department on the NWT Working Group, which includes the Department of Health and Social Services, Finance and Transportation. There are a number of departments that are involved in figuring out the GNWT's response to legalization of marijuana. The federal, provincial and territorial governments have actually formed an interdepartmental working group and the GNWT has two members, one from the Department of Justice and one from the Department of Health, on that intergovernmental working group.

Mr...

Not at this time, Mr. Speaker. This is early in the life of the new territorial authority, but this is some work that actually started a number of years ago. I think the Member was actually Minister of Health and Social Services when we started exploring the possibility of territorial physician services.

With the advent of a single authority, we have the ability to actually roll that out in a little bit more thorough manner. In the past we had a situation where we had one authority competing with another authority for physicians creating competition within the territory itself. Now, they're...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, recognizing that it's somewhat fluid, I can give the Member a bit of an update of where we are today on physicians. In Fort Smith, there's 4.5 positions of which one is filled by a local physician. In Yellowknife, there's 29 family practitioners, 26 are filled by local physicians. In the Tlicho, there are two family practitioner positions. Two of them are filled, but those physicians happen to be located in Yellowknife and split their time between the Tlicho and Yellowknife. The Sahtu, there are two family practitioner positions. They're both vacant at this...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, since we last discussed this topic in the House I have been provided with some additional updated information. It's my understanding that Public Works and Services will be taking possession of that building in the winter as opposed to the fall.

They will be, at that point, commissioning, doing some necessary commissioning, bringing in health-related equipment, and we are looking at moving into that building late summer next year. So it's a little further away that I had originally indicated. I appreciate Public Works and Health for providing me that...

Mr. Speaker, those ages were recently thrown out by the federal government's working group that's out doing some analysis right now. I don't personally have -- I haven't seen any scientific data to suggest the appropriate age. I would say that some of the suggestions around that age seem to have some value recognizing brain development and ensuring that youth develop safe and effectively. So at this point we have no opinion one way or the other but we will keep ourselves informed and see where it goes.

As I indicated, there is an interdepartmental working group doing this analysis. We are paying close attention to what some of the other jurisdictions are doing. Some of them are already moving forward with some regulations and I've had an opportunity to talk to some of the other Ministers of Health who have the same issues, and they've indicated that although they're moving forward on regulations they understand that that's cursory or initial and we won't really truly have an idea of what those regulations will be or should be until the federal government comes forward with their legislation...