Glen Abernethy

I’m, unfortunately, not aware of the particular legislation that the Member is talking about, but it is an interesting idea and I’ll certainly have the department take a look at the legislation and provide me with a bit of an overview of what it is and how it works within that jurisdiction.

As far as moving forward, I’ll share the information I get with committee, and if it’s the wish of committee, we’re certainly willing to have those discussions. Thank you.

There have been discussions with the community ongoing, but as far as the most recent round of discussions with respect to the opening, I will have to confirm that information with the Dehcho Health and Social Services Authority. I will commit to the Member to get him an update as quickly as possible. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I am not aware of the specific deficiencies, but I understand there were some life safety-related issues with respect to the facility. The contractor is working on those and we expect them to be done shortly, well before the March 31st contract close date. But for specific details, it might be better to go to the Minister responsible for Public Works and Services who is responsible for the build of this facility. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

We’ve just finished the most recent one as a result of recommendations from committee, so I’m assuming biannual would be two years from now. We did just finish one. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, we actually have contracts with accredited agencies located in Alberta, British Columbia, Saskatchewan and Manitoba to provide these incredibly specialized skills. It’s not just specialized skills but it’s different skills. I mean, we have our residents who have really unique conditions who require significant supports, and we don’t actually have programs or the specialists to provide those skills here in the Northwest Territories for one person. Whereas, they have institutions in the South that provide it for similar causes or conditions where they’ve got a large number of people...

The new hospital in Hay River, as the Member has indicated, is moving along smoothly and we anticipate to be moving staff over in the near future. We will get the information to the Member and to the individuals who are potentially affected before the move is finalized. Thank you.

I have confirmation from the authority that they have been in contact with the staff and they have articulated that the structural maintenance and the boilers and whatnot of the new facility will be done by Public Works and Services and that they’ve asked the staff if any of them are interested in transferring over.

We have been working closely with the Department of Public Works and Services who will ultimately have the big picture maintenance responsibilities for all of the government assets here in the Northwest Territories. But at the same time, and I want to continue to articulate, not all...

The Med-Response is not a public program. It’s a program for the staff to help coordinate the internal workings of the system to make sure our staff on the front line have the information they need. They will be able to transmit or translate any of the information received from professionals on the line to anybody who happens to be in their health centre or health station. It’s not open to the public. The public aren’t expected to call that number. It is a functional, internal process that helps coordinate all health services in the communities when required by the health practitioners in the...

Since November 30th we have been in a soft launch phase, which is basically a trial phase to work out some of the bugs that we assume would come in with this new state-of-the-art program. We wanted to make sure that we got it right. We have only just recently gone live and we continue to evaluate. There is actually an evaluation mechanism in place to monitor the calls and help us continually improve and evolve as the times change.

In the test phase we coordinated 698 clinical consults from all the authorities; 351 were air ambulance flights. We were actually - I think this is incredibly good...

I’ll commit to get that information on our current vacancies. They change from time to time. But once again, I go back to my previous comments about the specific individual conditions that an individual must have and it’s for services that aren’t available here in the Northwest Territories, you have to meet those conditions. So if we can provide it in the Northwest Territories, we do our best to provide it here in the Northwest Territories. Unfortunately, we do have individuals with incredibly high needs, 24/7 care that we can’t meet. We don’t have the expertise to provide those services here...