Glen Abernethy

Thank you. Recognizing that we have eight health and social services authorities in the Northwest Territories, each with their own unique challenges and their own unique realties, some being all community-based, some being more regional centre-based, some being hospital-based, like Stanton, each one of them has developed their own policy or their own procedures around trying to encourage people to attend their appointment. One thing we do, and all the authorities do, is I know that they do encourage people to let the authorities know, or the practitioners know, when they’re not going to be...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I will certainly get some more detailed information for the Member on this, but one of the challenges we face getting data from other authorities is the fact that every authority in the Northwest Territories is operated on different IT/IS/IM systems, they have different accounting systems, but we will continue to work with the authorities to get that information and I will provide some more detail to the Member once I get it from the department. Thank you.

I have a copy of the statements that the Member made today and I’m happy to take it to the Social Envelope Committee of Cabinet to have some further discussions. I’ll also share it with the working group that we have working on the territorial action plan and we’ll continue to have those discussions. I’m not committing to necessarily doing these things, but I think it’s important to have the discussion and finding a way to get to the same goal that the Member and I share. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have the Member’s comments and I appreciate his perspective. I agree that we need to do more to support the individuals, to break down the barriers to keep them out of poverty. We do have five pillars: children and family support, healthy living and reaching our potential, safe and affordable housing, sustainable communities and integration of services. I think all of these combined start addressing the issues. Maybe not to the degree the Member would like to see. Clearly, some more work is necessary and I’m happy to work with the other Ministers on the Social...

Mr. Speaker, it’s difficult to answer the questions without getting into the specifics of the individual and I’m not prepared to speak about the individual case. If an individual is injured in a community, usually the community health nurses will be in touch with the Stanton emerg if that’s the particular location where a doctor is available and where somebody needs to go to.

We are moving forward with Med-Response, which is actually a program that will give all the health centres and all the communities direct access to a physician who will then help coordinate medical travel and expedite the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have been briefed on the situation. I would be happy to have a conversation with the Member, but I’m not prepared to speak about an individual or her individual case here in the House. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The Member and I were both on the review of the Child and Family Services Committee in the 16th Assembly, and that was one of the clear recommendations, and we believe that. I still believe that is one of the key findings of that review that we did and is one of the reasons that I’ve worked hard on the Anti-Poverty Action Plan and the Anti-Poverty Framework. I continue to champion for the territorial development of a territorial action plan. The answer is yes, I think we can do better in that area. This morning I talked about neglect on the radio and that we need to move forward with some...

Thank you. I’ve had that discussion, that exact discussion with people all over the Northwest Territories, including on Cabinet and Members themselves and members of our original action team that put together the framework. I’ll have that discussion with the group that’s actually working on the territorial action plan, as well, but the feedback I get on a regular basis is how do you truly define poverty, and I hear that that’s what the Member is asking us to do, but many individuals who might fall under what one person might consider a poverty line don’t feel like they’re living in poverty. It...

Thank you. Once again, medical travel and medevacs are different things recovered under different policies. We are currently doing the review, which I’ve talked about a number of times in this House, on the Medical Travel Policy and I look forward to sharing those results and that progress with Members as we move forward.

With respect to medevacs, we are currently out for an RFP. The RFP closed last week and we hope to have a provider for air ambulance in the coming while here, but when it comes to medevacs, the ability to have an escort could be dependent on a number of things, plane sizes and...

Mr. Speaker, medical travel and medevac are two different policies. With respect to medevacs, obviously we want to get the individuals out of the communities and to appropriate care in as timely a manner as possible. There are obviously some situations where timing might be affected, but we do attempt to get individuals out as quickly as possible.

Once again, I would be happy to talk to the Member in private about the individual case. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.