Glen Abernethy

I, like Members in this House, have heard time and time again that the NWT health and social services system is not safe for Indigenous residents, nor does it account for Indigenous culture or healing needs. That is why, for the past 16 months, staff at the department have worked with Indigenous Northerners to hear their experiences, concerns, and aspirations for the NWT health and social services system. This included meeting with regional wellness councils, including the Beaufort-Delta, where council members had the opportunity to voice their community concerns about the health and wellbeing...

Significant new funding has been available to homecare beginning in 2017-2018. $2.5 million annually was included as an investment within the Government of the Northwest Territories. We also have $7.4 million for homecare over a 10-year period that we got from the federal government. This new funding is helping health and social services system enhance home and community care programs and services for clients across the Northwest Territories. Some of the ways that we have been able to do that is the establishment of 14 new homecare positions, as well as training for them, equipment, supplies...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. With me today are Christina Brownlee, who is legislative counsel, and Gary Toft, the director of policy, legislation, and communications with Health and Social Services.

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...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, at this time, there are no plans to put a full-time nurse into the community of Tsiigehtchic. We do get the public health nurse into the community for one day a week. We have physicians travelling to the community every four or five months. The community has access to services provided in other communities in cases of emergencies, including Fort McPherson and Inuvik. They have supports through the Med-Response team that can support the community health worker in the community in times of crisis. Most importantly, we are working on that pilot that we have...

The Regional Wellness Council across the Northwest Territories are there to provide us insight, wisdom, and make recommendations on ways to improve the delivery of programs and services in their regions and the communities.

Recruiting and retaining professionals is certainly an issue that affects everybody in the Health and Social Services system. I have reached out to Indigenous governments and, for the Regional Wellness Councils that I have met with, we have talked about trying to find ways to encourage local people to pursue health and social services careers.

The Regional Wellness Council...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, as I said a week or two ago, I had some responses around the Regional Wellness Councils. They do have the ability to set their agendas, and if they wanted to have some meetings with other groups, they would certainly be able to do that. It is my understanding right now that that has not been done. None of the Regional Wellness Councils have established or set up meetings with other bodies to share information or to talk. It's not a horrible idea. I will certainly raise it with the territorial authority and the board chair as a potential opportunity. Thank...

Although Hay River Health and Social Services is technically outside the public service at this time, we would still like to bring them in, which I believe may actually help with some of our recruitment challenges in that area. We do consider them part of the team, and we do work closely with them.

The territorial authority has reached out to other NWT regions for assistance in Hay River. Fort Smith has agreed to accept some of the referrals to help with the wait times. Fort Simpson has agreed to offer some level of clinical supervision until such time as we can hire somebody. Unfortunately...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to thank the Member for his statement. I agreed with pretty much everything that he said, that this is a problem, this is something we need to be fixing, and it's unacceptable to have these kinds of wait times. I do take a little bit of a disagreement with his comments that these issues have fallen on deaf ears. I do not believe that to be the case, and I think the staff in the authority and in the territorial authority are working hard to resolve some of these challenges and to improve services to the residents of Hay River, so I do take offence at...

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...