Glen Abernethy

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The action plan will be public and it will include details on actions as well as providing some time frames. Performance reporting will also be public for anybody who wants to look at it. I can commit to updating the action plan with progress reports on a regular basis. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

We do have a contract with the facilities in locations like Edmonton who are providing housing and support to our residents who are down in Edmonton for medical appointments and/or treatment. These individuals help get people to and from appointments and whatnot.

If there’s an incident within the facility, they are bound under the contract to update the department. I don’t have a direct link and conversation with those organizations, but I can be updated by the department as necessary. For the most part, the department will deal with it directly as an administrative or contractual issue.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. With respect to recommendation number six, I agree that all these indicators obviously require more improvement and improved monitoring. I would be happy to sit down with the Standing Committee on Social Programs to identify some appropriate formats and timing that would work for them and the department so that we can continue to provide these updates.

There are a number of services, and I hear the Member, we may have a communication gap in getting this information to the right people at the right time. I know our professionals certainly share the information when they come in contact, but if they don’t come in contact, the Member is right, the individuals who may need the information may not have it. I will have a conversation with the deputy of Health and Social Services to find out and get more concrete information around the types of communication we are using to help get the right information to the right people at the right time. I...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There is no cure for FASD that I am aware of. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I’m certainly going to have to follow up with the department to ask some additional questions and get some more information for the Member. The BiliBlankets offer the possibility to treat some degrees of jaundice at home for otherwise healthy babies. I acknowledge that there are some advantages here, but there are other methods of treatment as well.

In the Northwest Territories, unlike the rest of the country where the statistical prevalence of this particular condition is about 50 percent in babies, in the Northwest Territories, fortunately our statistics are significantly lower...

I would encourage the grandparents, obviously, to talk to social services to see how they can engage with the system, but it does come back to the parents who have the legal responsibility for those children. They would have to be involved as well. History would have to be determined; a file would have to be created. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, just for clarity, raising children is, first and foremost, a responsibility of the family. Parents have the right to make decisions about where their children live, but the GNWT is not necessarily responsible for paying for those decisions. The only time the GNWT would actually become involved is if a family has some financial challenges, is living in poverty, and we would provide income support. Families can make the decision to have children stay with one group and then apply for income support.

When health and social services becomes involved, the only time we can actually...

Mr. Speaker, June 1st is National Cancer Survivors Day. This day is an annual celebration of life and loved ones. Each year it reminds us of the importance of speaking openly about cancer and supporting one another in the face of such a serious disease.

On average, 111 new cases of cancer are diagnosed in the NWT every year. There is life after diagnosis. The NWT residents I know who have cancer have shown courage and strength in their individual cancer journeys.

Too often we think that the diagnosis of cancer is a reason for despair, but more people are surviving and going on to live full...

Mr. Speaker, we have a certain number of staff in the department who are doing a large amount of work, and more and more priorities are coming at them on a regular basis. We have seen clearly that we are capped with resources, and I want this work to be done and I want it to be done as quickly as possible, but we often go out and seek additional resources to help with the reviews and analysis and there are people who can help us do this in a timely manner, so this isn’t unusual, but given the timelines, we want to make sure that we get this done. I feel it’s important to expedite the section...