Statements in Debates
Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the Premier, I wish to table the following document entitled "Self-Government Agreement-in-Principle for Sahtu Dene and Metis of Norman Wells." Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and I thank the Member for his Member's statement earlier today. I think that it is important that we do recognize the incredible work that many of our amazing professionals provide throughout the healthcare system here in the Northwest Territories. These individuals are dedicated. They are committed to doing the best that they can for residents of the Northwest Territories in trying and challenging environments.
The authority does take significant effort to ensure that they are sharing these positive stories with their staff, and there are many different ways that this...
I am not going to talk about what the department is doing. I think that the Member is more referring, I believe, to the what the authority itself is doing. The NWT Health and Social Services Authority has launched an internal website that is available to all staff within the authority. The website itself focuses on many areas, including highlighting our own employees and the incredible work that some of our employees do, communicating change, promoting awareness of different programs and services, and when appropriate, highlighting some of the positive feedback that we are receiving, as long...
This is what this advisory group is going to help us with. We are not looking to do more planning. We are not looking to do more studies. We have the resource in front of us. We know there was not a lot of uptake. The Member even, in her Member's statement, mentioned that there has not been a lot of uptake with this program and this tool across Canada, so there are clearly some challenges with acceptance of this tool by practitioners. We see that there is some value, and we are going to get this group to work with us to help us figure out how to get more buy-in and utilize this tool as...
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The department is actually very familiar with the screening brief intervention and referral process. They are familiar with both the practice, and they have done some research. In fact, they did utilize that tool here in the Northwest Territories dating back to 2014. It was actually used as part of an approach to work with youth, and it was done in conjunction with some screening tools, including motivational interviewing. Unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, I have confirmed with the department that there was not a lot of uptake by practitioners. Practitioners like physicians...
Off the top of my head, I can't tell you what the vacancy rate is across the entire system, but with respect to community health nurses in the 65 positions that we have established, we are running at about an 18.5-percent vacancy. Many of those are filled by short-term locums to ensure that we have full coverage in communities while we continue to try and recruit on an indeterminate basis. We have fantastic health professionals out there. Some of them do choose, for any number of reasons, to move on to different opportunities, so we have a constant turnover. We do, and we will continue to...
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I believe that there are about 65 funded community health nurse positions across the Northwest Territories, and we run about an 18.5-percent vacancy on those. We are constantly out recruiting and trying to find nurses to come into our community health centres on a permanent basis.
Given that many of our nursing stations are small, with three or four nurses, when one of those individuals is either sick or has to leave on short notice, there are definitely some service impacts on that. When we know that individuals are leaving or coming to an end of a term, we have an...
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I actually don't remember off the top of my head what the total staff complement of Stanton existing is, but I can say that we are adding $2.667 million to operationalize Stanton, which is basically 42.5 new positions. The budget increase, as Mr. Kalgutkar said, is based on the projected cost of delivering existing services in the new space. There will be increased costs due to the increased size and the physical layout of the building, upgraded technology and equipment, changing work processes, and the delivery of facility management services through the PC.
This isn't...
I will make sure that I ask the department to take this section of the Hansard and share it with the staff in the territorial authority so that they understand and can hear the message from the MLA from his riding. The website is actually an internal website for staff only. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
We did obtain some dollars from the federal government, focused on helping us get a message out about the use of cannabis and encouraging people to use responsibly and to understand the health ramifications of using it. This money we are also going to be using to do more of a polysubstance approach, trying to get messages out there both online and at a community level, using different sources and technology to get this information out. So, yes, Mr. Speaker, this is something we are aware of. This is something we are trying to do. We are trying to be creative. We are trying to tailor the...