Glen Abernethy

In clarifying that, I also want to see whether or not we require our term and indeterminate nurses working in community health centres to have IAP.

Another section within this particular division or area is physician services. I was interested, when the Minister was talking she referred to if we were running on physicians on sort of a territorial model rather than a regional or authority model. Is there any progress to going to that territorial model for physicians or are we still running it as an authority-based model?

Excellent. There’s still a little bit of time on the clock too. Thanks for that. That’s all good information. I’m happy to hear that. There are some areas that I don’t hear much talk about and I’d like to hear a little bit more from the Minister or the deputy minister on this area.

Under this area we have hospital services and NWT health centres. Now, there’s certainly one thing that crosses over that, and that is nurses. We need nurses in hospitals and we need nurses in health centres. There’s still an international and national shortage of nurses in the country and around the globe, and as a...

I think we are combining and using terms and it is getting a little confusing for me. Relief nurses are an indeterminate nurse that has been hired by Stanton to provide backfill when nurses call in sick or are away on holidays, but they are permanent without guaranteed hours and they are indeterminate employees. That is one category. I would be curious what the utilization of them is.

There is the other category which is casuals, who have been offered training, IAP particular, so that we could hire them to go out and provide backfill in the communities when there isn’t somebody, a permanent...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. What does that put us at for total debt for those two facilities?

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister Lee.

Thanks to the Minister for that response. I guess I got just a quick comment and that’s, I think, going to be directed to the Minister of Finance, the Minister of Health, the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, as well as the Minister of Public Works and Services. Clearly, bandwidth is an issue of ultimate importance as far as reducing our future costs and I’d like to see this Cabinet making more progress on extending bandwidth within the communities, especially up and down the valley. If we can put these technologies that health has access to, we’re going to improve services, have...

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. I think that last question actually refers to the next section in the budget, but I’ll go to the Minister anyway.

Just for the record, after the deputy minister spoke I was going to go back to the Minister. I think she wanted to answer your first question but I skipped over her. So I apologize to the Minister for that and I’ll go to the Minister for a response on both questions, I imagine.

Another section, division, whatnot, responsibility under the program delivery support is information services division. There’s been a lot of talk about e-health and EMRs, DI/PACS and all the great programs that are out there, all the great technology that’s out there to help us provide health services in a more streamlined manner. I understand that bandwidth has been a significant issue in getting these fantastic technologies into our small communities. These things, in my opinion, could help us reduce potential medical travel if we have ability for physicians to use this technology to help...

Thank you, Ms. Meade. Mr. Bromley, your time is up. I could put you back on the list, if you wish. Otherwise I’ll go to next on my list, which is Mr. Ramsay.

So that $4 million is, I guess, co-managed by HR and Health and Social Services and is responsible for programs such as CHN development, our med school bursaries, our nursing bursaries. Could the Minister tell me: have we eliminated any of our bursaries in this division over the last year? For instance, do we still provide physician bursaries? Do we still have a community health nurse development bursary? Are we still providing all of the nursing bursaries? Have any of the bursaries that we provide or have provided in that section been eliminated?