Glen Abernethy

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’m pleased to be here to discuss Bill 68, An Act to Amend the Child and Family Services Act, No. 2. Bill 68 proposes to remove the child and family services committees from the act. These amendments were initiated by a recommendation made by the Standing Committee on Social Programs in their Committee Report 18-17(5), Report on the Review of Bill 47, An Act to Amend the Child and Family Services Act, where the Department of Health and Social Services was encouraged to act immediately and introduce a bill to remove all provisions pertaining to the child and family...

Mr. Speaker, the number of new cancer cases in the Northwest Territories is expected to rise dramatically by 2030. According to Canadian Cancer Statistics 2015, a report released by the Canadian Cancer Society earlier this year, the number of new cancer cases in all of the territories will increase by approximately 60 percent within the next 15 years, largely due to an anticipated increase in the seniors population.

To guide our planning for this increase in cases, the Department of Health and Social Services has developed the NWT’s first 10-year Cancer Strategy, Charting Our Course: Northwest...

I would like to say that we won’t have to come forward for a supp for Norman Wells because I’m hoping that the department and FMB and the Department of Finance are able to finalize what is actually required and included in the business planning process so we don’t have to come forward for a supp. But, at the same time, I do recognize that some of this stuff is fluid and we are doing the planning but we don’t know the exact opening date of the Norman Wells facility so there are still a couple of ifs in the air. But I would like to say that hopefully we won’t have to come forward for a supp...

I’ll just repeat the same thing. I mean, we have the list of positions that have been approved, including the full-time and the relief, and those were deemed to be essential for opening the new facility and running the new facility. There were a number of other positions and many of them are, like, point five of a position or point 25 of a position. It was very difficult to provide a sound justification without actually being able to get into the facility to open it.

I’m happy to share some of those numbers with the Members from Hay River, but I do want to be clear that that does not mean that...

Thank you, Madam Chair. We were talking about a similar situation the other day with respect to Stanton and new facilities. When it comes to Hay River, when the building began construction the Hay River authority was tasked with figuring out how many positions would be required to properly run that facility. I think, as in most cases, there was the “I would love to have” list, the “absolutely need” list and the “I would like to have” list. The 32 was the dream list of adding programs, enhancing some services and doing some things slightly different. But given the mandate of the project, it...

That question is kind of impossible to answer standing up here today. Every individual is different and every situation is different. Not all individuals end up having an amputation; not all individuals end up blind. We want to manage diabetes with the patients to avoid having to go down that particular road.

We also know that diabetes is often complicated with other conditions, so how do you determine whether it’s strictly diabetes or another condition that has actually resulted in the particular amputation or blindness? It would be very difficult for us to actually quantify what is...

As I indicated, through BETTER project we’ve developed these motivational videos. We’ve been working with Education, Culture and Employment that has a project called Screen Smart, which is introduced in NWT schools to help children who may be obese to pursue healthy living so they don’t develop type 2 diabetes later in life. I’m not 100 percent sure; I can’t remember the exact program the Member is referring to with respect to diabetes education, but we are, through our public health unit, getting information out there on diabetes to make sure people are as informed as possible. If the Member...

Midwifery services, as I indicated in the business planning process and the budget planning process, there will be planning that will take place during the ’15-16 fiscal year and into the ’16-17 fiscal year. We’re hoping by the end of the ’16-17 fiscal year we should be in a position to have a real solid plan of how many midwives we need and begin the staffing process. Thank you.

When that number or that decision to put a midwifery program in the Beaufort-Delta was originally decided or originally included in the report, a number of realities were quite different. We actually didn’t have stable physicians in the Beaufort-Delta providing birthing services. They had not implemented the MORE OB program in that particular region and the birth numbers were quite high.

Since that time and prior to this decision, birthing rates in the Beaufort-Delta had stabilized. We had full-time, stable physicians in the community who had actually gone out and put in the MORE OB...

Yes, I do.