Glen Abernethy

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, yes, I just got back from the FTP meeting earlier today. The meeting went well on many fronts. We talked about many of the areas where the federal and provincial and territorial governments are working together, like pharmaceutical prices across this country. Working together we've brought the price of pharmaceuticals down by over $700 million annually and with the new partnership with the federal government, we look like we might be able to bring it down by $1.2 billion annually. So a lot of good work on that front. When it came to the health accord, we...

Individuals within our long-term care facilities have a wide range of different challenges. As I indicated previously, we do an assessment of each individual to identify their needs and their specific needs and develop personal care plans based on the individual's needs. Having said that, in our new facilities we have a lot more structures built into the buildings themselves so that we can isolate different areas and keep individuals, whether they have dementia or not, separated from each other when there are issues, when there is a risk of violence.

So our new facilities do have the ability to...

The training varies across the Northwest Territories depending on the type of training or support that individual authorities pre-transformation had established. We are looking to try to obviously standardize some training to make sure that all long-term care facilities have training that is both adequate, timely, and effective. As an example, there is a three-day training that has been available in Fort Smith called P.I.E.C.E.S. P.I.E.C.E.S is an approach to a multidisciplinary team to understand enhanced care for individuals with physical and/or cognitive mental health issues that have...

Mr. Speaker, the Member and the House are aware of, obviously, the fiscal challenges that we're facing, so we would have to be looking within. But it doesn't mean, Mr. Speaker, that we're not interested in doing this, but the way our current facilities are designed, some of them are more open concept, it may prove unnecessary to have cameras in some of our facilities. We need to look. We need to talk to the longterm care facilities that exist and get their ideas of where this might be appropriate and where it may be unnecessary. So it's certainly not all longterm care facilities, but we're...

Mr. Speaker, as somebody is admitted into a longterm care facility, there is a comprehensive functional assessment done of the individual to determine what their needs are. This information assessment is used to actually develop individual care plans which address the individual's mental health issues and other challenges. These are the things that we do to build individual case plans that will hopefully help us avoid violent incidents within our system. But it has happened. The Member is aware of, certainly, the incident that has recently happened, and we know from review across Canada and by...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'd like to table the following seven documents entitled "Follow-up Letter to Oral Question 200-18(2): Licenses Practical Nursing Program in Tsiigehtchic," "Follow-up Letter to Oral Question 216-18(2) and Oral Question 225-18(2): Medical Travel Challenges," "Follow-up Letter to Oral Question 224-18(2): Services to Support Seniors Aging in Place," "Follow-up Letter to Oral Question 246-18(2): Contract Midwifery Services in Yellowknife," "Follow-up Letter to Oral Question 250-18(2): GNWT Campaign to Eliminate Family Violence," "Follow-up Letter to Oral Question 277-18(2)...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I'm committed to moving this initiative forward. The community of Fort Simpson does need an upgrade to their health centre. We need to bring it to current standards. We are moving the planning process forward. I'm happy to move this into the capital planning process at the earliest opportunity, but it does have to compete with a number of projects across the Northwest Territories, whether it's schools, health centres in different locations, other infrastructure that are being demanded by residents of the Northwest Territories. We're doing the work. We're...

As with all the facilities that we've built, including the ones that we're currently building, there is no addition of services being added to Fort Simpson. The facilities will provide us with the ability to provide services better, more effectively, safer, given the technology requirements of our health system as it stands today. So there will be no new or additional programs being added to Fort Simpson, which is consistent with the health centre in Norman Wells, which is consistent with the health centre in Fort Res, and the one we would be building in Tulita. The one difference is the...

Mr. Speaker, there was a number of reasons that the project was delayed or rather the planning study was delayed. Part of that included our inability to obtain or secure a suitable parcel of land. Here was a significant amount of debate in the community about where the health centre should be and where it should not be, and it took us longer to get a set piece of land. That set piece of land was required before we could actually move forward with the planning study because the location helps us build the planning study.

When the parcel of land was actually approved we had to do an...

Mr. Speaker, I think, at the time, that meeting was to discuss land location and a few other things to get, actually, a confirmed sense of where that building would be located. There was some talk about some of the specifics of the building. It is going to be a level B/C facility, which is basically one of our larger health centres in the Northwest Territories, providing a larger range of services given the size and scope of the community that it's located in and the regional nature of that community.

In a sense, the facility is going to be very similar to the one in Norman Wells. There was...