Glen Abernethy

There is a wait list for the zero- to 18-year-olds for 2018-2019. There are 23 for OT and five for speech-language therapy. Of those, nine OTs are for children under five, and five speech-language therapy are for children under five.

Mr. Speaker, this Legislative Assembly has committed to support early childhood development, and today I want to provide Members and the public with an update on our work to provide equitable access to a range of inclusive, culturally-informed programs and services for and children under five years of age and expecting parents.

In June 2017, our government tabled a renewed three-year Early Childhood Development Action Plan designed to help us take action at several sensitive times of a child's development. For the past two years, we have worked with parents, elders, healthcare practitioners...

Mr. Speaker, I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Inuvik Twin Lakes, that Bill 40, Smoking Control and Reduction Act, be read for the first time. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Some of that information has already been made public. We have been clear on what types of services and what services will be going into the Stanton legacy building. The extended care will be there. Long-term care will be there, and there will be a number of other services, including some of the rehab services, the primary care clinics, and other things. Those are going to be in the old Stanton.

Like I said, I am happy to sit down with the Member. I was able to find that information when I looked. I would be happy to sit down with the Member and figure out what is missing from the average user...

Yes, please.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. As the Member knows, when it comes to dementia, we have one facility to provide services to our residents who have dementia. Obviously, that facility is full, and we are always looking for ways to support our people the best that we can. The long-term care facility in Norman Wells is certainly going to help us with that.

With respect to dialysis, I think that everybody in this building is aware of the pressures that we have under dialysis and the work that we are doing. Having said that, we are not looking at expanding our chairs right at this point. We are looking at...

Mr. Chair, originally that's how we were hoping to obtain the $2.4 million in savings. We have done some more analysis; we have done some more digging. We wanted to make sure that we didn't adversely affect many of our residents. Most of the co-pay comes from insurance providers and others, so we've done some tweaking around that. I'm in the process of trying to finalize that work now. I met with committee a number of months ago, where we showed some scenarios. We've taken feedback from committee to make some changes to what we were proposing. We're very close to being ready to come back to...

Not at this time, Mr. Chair. We need to get that report in. We need to have that report analyzed. We need to make sure that our design is getting maximum benefit for the dollars that we do have.

If it turns out that the report suggests that we need to make significant new investments in this area, recognizing that this is the Non-Insured Health Benefits and not covered in most jurisdictions, then we are prepared to begin that work to build the business case that it is necessary to approach FMBS and seek additional funds in the future. There is still a lot of work before we will be ready to do...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. It is to help us all and together to define the types of and scope of services that are provided in the shelters and what we are able to provide some financial support to so that we have some consistency across the territory and we are able to fund based on a consistent application. I think the Member knows, for many years, we have been funding the shelters, but there really hasn't been any sort of set criteria on why one shelter gets X dollars and the other one does not. So that is where we are working on, is finding something that will help us set sort of some...

Yes, please, Mr. Chair.