Glen Abernethy

We don’t anticipate savings through the exercise we are going through. What we’re trying to do is streamline services so we can provide the best results to residents of the Northwest Territories in all communities and regions. That includes having some back office functions where shared activities can be done at a territorial level regardless of the region it happens to be located in. Authorities and boards can work together to get economies of scale. We don’t believe it is going to save us money, but it will give us greater control over future spending because we will be able to get some...

Thank you, Madam Chair. There are a large number of services that have become available over the years that are not currently covered under our insured services. Our insured services coverage is fairly dated and it hasn’t really had a very comprehensive review in some time, which is one of the reasons why we’ve created the chief clinical advisor position to help us actually do this analysis to make sure that the types of things that are covered under insured services are really keeping with the times, and the fact that the health system does change and evolve and new programs and services come...

I don’t believe we have that detail. I do remember in the last government when the supplementary health debate occurred in the House, there was some recognition by the department that we would find ways to encourage people to obtain some sort of third-party insurance, whether it’s through employers or other things. I’m not currently aware of the status of that, but I will talk to the department, I will get an update and I’ll provide that to committee.

It does complicate some of the work we’re doing now moving to a shared services model because with that particular authority, we’re going to have to have separate contracts to allow us to have those types of discussions and work together on those particular arrangements. So it does create some complications from having territory-wide shared service and guaranteeing everyone the same standard of shared service as well as shared products, shared purchasing, shared finance, shared IT. It does complicate all of those things.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. As I’ve mentioned several times, we are working and moving forward on this initiative. We are currently doing a number of back office functions. We’re working on shared procurement, shared IT/IS/IM, we’re looking at the territorial physician pool or the territorial physician model. A number of these things are well in progress and well on the way.

We have been having discussions with committee. We have been having discussions with our Aboriginal government partners, with the JLC, which is the Joint Leadership Committee, which is the chairs and public administrators of all...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. These are federal dollars that have clearly sunsetted, but it doesn’t mean that we’re not doing anything with respect to diabetes education, health promotion. We are working on a chronic disease management study to help us have better information on how to educate and keep people healthy in the Northwest Territories. We have diabetes educators. We have nutritionists in the Northwest Territories. We’ve got different programs that are being delivered by different staff throughout the Northwest Territories as far as healthy eating, exercise, diet. There are a significant...

No, Madam Chair.

Thank you. Currently everything in the GNWT’s response to the framework is funded and identified to be funded within the plan. We hope to, with partners, leverage for more dollars to combat poverty here in the Northwest Territories, but I must remind everybody that this $2.6 million we’re talking about is new investment into the combat against poverty. There are a number of actions within the action plan that already have dollars associated with them and a bunch of the work being done by departments like the Housing Corp are part of the strategy to combat poverty in the Northwest Territories...

Yes.

That was done in the past when we did the assessment previously in 2005. I am pretty sure that’s accurate, I might be off a little bit. We would have to do the same to make sure that if we move forward and it is reasonable to move forward based on cost, that we are basing it on fully understood numbers.