Glen Abernethy

It’s a shared responsibility across the Government of the Northwest Territories depending on the different portfolios. Housing has a significant number of responsibilities around persons with disabilities and they have been addressing those. As does MACA with communities, as does Health and Social Services, things that we’ve done around the Early Childhood Development Action Plan, work around respite. As the Minister responsible, one of my responsibilities is to share information across the different departments and ensure that they are working towards a common goal, but it doesn’t change the...

Aside from medical travel, the Department of Health and Social Services isn’t actually involved in transportation, but I have had this issue raised to me and we have shared this information with MACA, who has indicated to me that the community government could choose to use either their gas tax or community public infrastructure funding to purchase handivans in their communities to provide services to their residents. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The Department of Education, Culture and Employment has taken the lead on the Labour Market Agreement for Persons with Disabilities. The labour agreement was signed with the Government of Canada in February 2014 to provide funding to better support education and training and to put more employment participation for persons with disabilities. This agreement is one of a series of labour market agreements successfully negotiated between the GNWT, particularly the Department of Education, Culture and Employment, and the Government of Canada with some targeted initiatives for some older workers and...

I’ve reviewed that, as well, and it is an incredibly good document. I do want to applaud the NWT Disabilities Council for their initiative and incredibly hard work.

As I’ve indicated, we’ve taken action on a number of items that were in the initial action plan that was provided and they’ve been included in a different strategies or different action items that we’ve been moving forward, like the early childhood development. We’ve done a significant amount of work around respite. Moving forward, the type of information that was provided to us is going to help us inform these different program...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to take this opportunity to recognize all of the Pages who are providing us such incredible services here in the Legislative Assembly. They liquidated us well. That’s not the right word, but you know what I mean. Hydrated. Properly hydrated. Liquidated, that’s good, eh? You like that? They keep us properly hydrated; they keep the information flowing; so I really want to take an opportunity to thank all the Pages and, in particular, a Page from the Great Slave Riding, Kelsy Nayally. Welcome to the Chamber and thank you so much.

I also want to recognize a...

Thank you, Madam Chair. The Member asked roughly the same question when we were discussing the capital budget for ’16-17. At that time I indicated that we have actually made some progress on this file, significant progress. We are moving forward with a brand new system; we’re in the negotiations with a potential provider. It’s not going to be a rebuild of the existing awful system that the Member has described, but given the time it’s taken to land on an appropriate vendor, someone who can actually do the work and give us the tool that is going to meet the needs of the social workers that are...

Mr. Speaker, I wish to table the following document, entitled “NWT Medical Travel Program: Patient-Escort Supports – Report on What We Heard, May 2015.” Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I’m happy to have the department continue and re-engage in some dialogue with BC to see what it would take, but I do put some provisos around that. When a resident of the Northwest Territories chooses to go outside of this province for medical treatment that’s available in this province, we don’t cover that. What we’re talking about now is whether or not we can cover people for referrals, somebody who’s actually accessed and engaged in the system, so not people who are just making choices to travel outside but where there’s been a referral or something, we’re certainly willing to have those...

We don’t have an action plan per se. What we do have is Our Elders: Our Communities framework which focuses on seven different priority areas: healthy and active aging; home and community care services; integrated and coordinated services across the continuum; getting people to work together, as the Member has described; caregiver supports; elder-responsive communities is another initiative that we’re working on with communities and partners; and ensuring that there’s sustainable best practices available for all of the care providers and residents of the Northwest Territories.

We are also...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We are always looking at the numbers and the costs of sending people south versus finding ways to keep them here in the North. We are doing ongoing analysis. We haven’t been able to identify anything appropriate as an immediate move to the Northwest Territories at this point in time. But in the construction and design of Stanton, we didn’t want to limit ourselves to the future. So there is room within the proposed build that would fit something like an MRI, as an example. In the plan of the new building, there is a section that is designated for where we put the addition...