Glen Abernethy

I hear the Member and I’m certainly willing to have a conversation with the department to see if we can extend the deadline or the amount of time it takes for individuals to get their names on the forms, but for changes after the fact, it does involve reprinting forms, it does involve reprinting certificates where there is a significant expense. So the fee for those changes would have to stay in place, but I would certainly talk to the department to see if we could extend the time for individuals who live in small, rural and remote communities. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. If the name had actually been provided on the registration form in the beginning, there would have been no additional fee. We go to the steps of printing forms and mailing them out, but to do changes later there are significant costs to doing that. That’s why there is a fee for changes at different times. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, the triage service is actually something that’s provided by the Government of the Northwest Territories, and we will be working incredibly closely with the airline and the med responders as well as our health providers in the individual communities, whether it’s a CHR or community health nurse. They’ll be able to call into a central line where they’ll have medical staff as well as someone to dispatch the airplane to make sure that all the people that need to make decisions with respect to getting an airplane into a community are on the line at the same time in order to get maximum...

Mr. Speaker, in the contract there has been identification that the providers have to have planes that can get into the shorter runways within the time specified. For those shorter runways, the time specified has been two hours, and that determines the conditions that have been met.

This contract goes live on April 1st, so effective April 1st it will be a two-hour turnaround time, barring, of course, weather conditions that may limit us. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, the management of the airports is actually done by the Department of Transportation, and we will continue to work with Transportation to ensure that those requirements are met.

But I would like to say that as a result of these incidents, we have made other changes in our system outside of the contract that we’ve currently negotiated. We have developed what is called a Med-Response unit within the department. It’s a territorial program. One of the key functions of this Med-Response unit is to provide air ambulance triage and make sure that the right people are on the phone at the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In negotiating the final contract, the communities of Jean Marie River, Nahanni Butte and Trout Lake runways currently require aircraft with a short take-off distance. As a result of this contract, we’ve set it up so that the turnaround time on these particular airports, the shorter runways, is two hours, compared to four hours like it used to be. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I’ve had a lot of conversations with our director of territorial services as well as social workers on this particular issue. We know there are significant limitations in the legislation itself and we have to make those changes. I actually anticipate that the legislation is going to take less than two to three years to be rolled out. We are hoping to have legislation available in this government, in this Assembly, but it likely will be in the next Assembly. But we are moving on it because it’s that important.

As far as dealing with the individuals, we are continuing to make social...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Last year we actually went out and started doing some consultations and getting input from the communities. We had a discussion paper that was put online and shared with committee. Both the department and the committee went out looking for additional input on that. We’ve used that data to develop an LP. The LP has gone to committee. On October 20th the committee returned the LP and I am now taking that forward to Cabinet. As soon as it is passed in Cabinet, we will be issuing drafting instructions from the Department of Health and Social Services to the Department of...

When I was in Hay River, the concerns I heard were: is this centralization, what about bringing our people in from Hay River into the public service, and the other one was the board and how would we get back to a board or council for Hay River representation. Absolutely, this is not centralization. Even if we work together and partnership purchase to get economies of scale, we are still going to need the individual in the Hay River for Health and Social Services Authority or the regional hospital to coordinate the purchase of the supplies they need. We will still need those individuals at the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. When I was in Hay River earlier this summer, talking about board reform and the governance changes that we are proposing, I did meet with the public and one of the things that came up on regular basis is recognizing that Hay River is outside the public service and how do we bring them in. We are working on that right now. We are quantifying what the cost might be to bring them over into the public service and what other actions may be necessary. Once we have that information, we will be in a better position to figure out what our next steps will be and how and if we can...