I am pleased to inform the Member that tomorrow I'll be tabling "Caring For Our People: Cultural Safety Action Plan 2018-2020." Tomorrow I will also be hosting a public launch here in the Assembly at 11:00 a.m., and I hope that all Members are able to attend.

Regarding the Member's concerns about cultural safety for Indigenous residents and elders, work is already under way. First, I'd like to highlight the 2018-2020 Inuinnaqtun pilot program at the Enegak Health and Social Services Centre in Ulukhaktok funded by the department. The pilot project will support the language needs of the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As a government, our mandate is to support the elders to live in their own houses for as long as possible while ensuring that adequate supports are available for those who can no longer live within their own homes. We have taken a number of actions to meet that mandate, which are within the Continuing Care Services Action Plan, which has already been released. We will be compiling the home and community care review. That is currently under way.

The purpose of that review is to document existing home and community care resources, programs, and services offered by each...

I would, Mr. Chair.

The Department of Health and Social Services committed to providing high-quality services to the residents across this territory, and there is only six months left in this Assembly. Nobody knows what the next Assembly is going to look forward to, but, as a system, we will continue to monitor the provision of services. As technologies and other things evolve, we may be in a position where it's appropriate to put a nurse in some of our smaller communities; it may be practical to do so. We can't say that that's not going to happen. We do not know how things are going to roll out, but this system...

I was not living in the community, and I certainly was not in this position back then, so I cannot speak for the decisions of the day, but I know that we have a certain criteria for putting nurses in communities, which include size of community, access to services, co-location with RCMP, those types of things. However, as technology changes, Mr. Speaker, the provision of our services can evolve, and we are certainly learning more as we go. The community is continuing to evolve. There may be a situation where it is appropriate to put a full-time nurse in that community, but, with the supports...

This is an area that traditionally over the years hasn't been followed up on or addressed. I made a commitment within this government to work with Indigenous leaders and interested stakeholders to bring traditional healing and wellness into our health and social services system. We work closely with the Indigenous governments here. We put together a working group who actually helped us develop some terms of reference for the creation and establishment of a traditional wellness or a traditional healing advisory group, and we have put that working group in place.

Their role is to provide us...

I am not 100 percent sure what the Member is asking. I do know that the territorial authority does have some human resource functions to help them do some strategic planning to ensure that they are supporting their staff. They work closely with the human resource department of Finance to do recruitment and retention, to do staffing. I am not sure exactly what the Member is asking. Within the strategic plan, there is talk about the recruitment or retention of hard-to-recruit allied health professionals, nurses, social workers, and others, but as far as an individual plan by community or region...

When it comes to providing services through staff in positions that have high turnover, we can never say with certainty that this problem will be gone. We may be able to resolve it with a full-stocked complement of staff, but if turnover occurs again, we could have some blips. That is why working with the other regions is so important.

Community counselling services in Hay River, as the Member said, at 35 weeks is inappropriate, and we need to work together with our partners to bring that down. There are apparently about 55 clients on the wait list. The authority is managing the wait list based...

When somebody says the issues are falling on the deaf ears, usually to me that means that he is suggesting or somebody is suggesting nobody is listening. I am happy to hear that the Member does acknowledge that we are listening and that work is happening in this area.

When it comes to staffing, the Hay River Health and Social Services is currently reviewing the job descriptions for the mental health and addictions counsellor positions to make sure that the required qualifications that are identified do not create any unintended barriers to staffing those positions. They are also exploring the...

In the Tsiigehtchic Health Centre, there is a full-time community health worker who has access to Med-Response and to professional services of nurses and doctors through Med-Response. There is a part-time home support worker, and there is a half-time community health representative. The public health nurse goes in for one day per week. The public health nurse, as I indicated, remains in the community when Highway No. 8 is inaccessible. We have a physician from Inuvik who provides services for one day every four to five weeks. In urgent emergency situations, the community wellness worker can...