Glen Abernethy

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...

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

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...

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...

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...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Recognizing the time, I will try my best to do this quickly. Dental services are not provided by the Government of the Northwest Territories. They are provided by private clinics and private practitioners. That is for all residents of the Northwest Territories. Dental services are not an insured health service.

However, the department does administer portions of the Non-Insured Health Benefits Program (NIHB) on behalf of the federal government, who do have some responsibility for ensuring that dental services are provided to those who are eligible for NIHB. The health...