Great Slave

Statements in Debates

Debates of , 18th Assembly, 3rd Session (day 59)

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...

Debates of , 18th Assembly, 3rd Session (day 59)

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...

Debates of , 18th Assembly, 3rd Session (day 59)

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...

Debates of , 18th Assembly, 3rd Session (day 59)

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...

Debates of , 18th Assembly, 3rd Session (day 59)

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...

Debates of , 18th Assembly, 3rd Session (day 58)

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, Regional Wellness Council members are a critical part of our health and social services system. They are change leaders in their communities and a voice for residents in their regions. They champion the ideas and concerns of residents and are passionate about using that information to shape and improve our health and social services.

Mr. Speaker, as Members know, we have six Regional Wellness Councils across the territory, representing the regions of Beaufort-Delta, Deh Cho, Fort Smith, Hay River, Sahtu, and Yellowknife. Each council has six members and a...

Debates of , 18th Assembly, 3rd Session (day 58)

Mr. Speaker, I wish to table the following document entitled "2018 Annual Report, Public Utilities Board of the Northwest Territories." Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Debates of , 18th Assembly, 3rd Session (day 58)

We are always looking for opportunities to strengthen our response to these types of breaches, to make sure that they do not happen again. This one is very complex. There is lots of information out there, lots of conflicting information, and I think it's too early to presume we know what the findings are going to be. We are working closely with the Information and Privacy Commissioner. The Information and Privacy Commissioner, will likely be making a report on this, as well, and I look forward to discussing those findings with the Information and Privacy Commissioner, with committee, to make...

Debates of , 18th Assembly, 3rd Session (day 58)

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I think the breach was incredibly troubling. We take it very seriously. We have been working very closely with the Information and Privacy Commissioner, who actually has possession of those files that were found. We have attempted to reach out to all of the clients, but the records are quite old and some of the contact information on those records is not current, so we are trying to track down some individuals. As of February 21st, 69 individuals have been notified by the authority, by mail. As I said, the documents, some of them, are very old, so we have not been able...

Debates of , 18th Assembly, 3rd Session (day 58)

We did release the oral health strategy here in the Northwest Territories, and the focus is on prevention rather than the actual provision of services, because the provision of services is the responsibility of private dentists and others. We do accept and we do agree with everything the Member said about the value of oral health and healthy gums, a healthy mouth leading to overall health. We do have the oral health strategy. There is a lot of focus on youth, as the Member has said.

However, with regard to oral health initiatives for the adult population, there are a number of action items...