Julie Green

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise today to pay tribute to my friend, mentor, and collaborator, Lyda Fuller. Ms. Fuller is retiring at the end of this month, after a 35-year career with the YWCA, 23 of those years in Yellowknife. Ms. Fuller is originally from Baltimore, Maryland. After she finished her master's degree at Johns Hopkins University, she worked with vulnerable populations there. On a camping trip to Ontario with a friend, she met her future husband, Ron, and eventually married him and moved to the YWCA in St. Thomas to work as director of community development. While there, she...

I am a bossy person, but I am not the boss of the CPHO. I can't tell her what to do. I can make a suggestion, and she can weigh it and decide whether she wants to go along with it. She is a very compassionate person, and I am sure that she has looked at requests like this before. If the Member has specific constituents in mind who need this service, I would encourage them to contact ProtectNWT and seek that exemption.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Thank you for the question, Member for Nunakput. I recognize that this is a terrible time to be facing a serious illness where it's necessary to travel outside of your community and outside of the territory on a regular basis for treatment, and I certainly do empathize with the people who are doing that and recognize that, in fact, this travel is a burden. Thank you.

There is a testing unit called Panbio that will be in place in every health centre by the end of October. It will provide rapid testing in the sense that it can be used at point of care and generate a result right then and there. It is a very simple-to-use machine; it is not only available to highly trained medical professionals. The thing is that, if somebody is not symptomatic, these machines are not necessarily the things that they need most. There is sort of a sequence of events. There can be a screening test: do you have COVID now? However, there need to be follow-up tests through the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thank you to the Member for Hay River South for that question. There is a public health order in place for the building based on the risk of exposure to asbestos and mould, among other things. The CPHO has been working diligently with the owner this month to understand the level of contamination and remediation that has taken place and what needs to take place in the future. The most recent development is that the CPHO has hired a consultant to verify and augment the reports that she has received from the contractor for the owner, and this work will be done on an...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and thank you for the question. Mr. Speaker, what the Department of Health and Social Services is doing early next year is to survey people who have received treatment in addictions centres to understand directly from them, the people who have used these centres, about the successes and shortcomings of their experience. I am very interested in seeing that information. What I remember from our tour that you were on, as well, Mr. Speaker, as a member of the social development committee, is there was quite a gap between what was being said by people in the NWT and what was...

Good afternoon. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Poverty reduction is an urgent challenge that everyone needs to be aware of. Poverty levels have further increased with COVID-19, which could push more residents into poverty due to an uncertain economy, food insecurity, and the high cost of living. To support residents during the pandemic, the Government of Northwest Territories took a whole-of-government approach on several fronts. During the month of March, income assistance recipients received a one-time emergency allowance. The GNWT is also taking action to provide supports and protection for...

Yes. I'm well aware that the Member is a nurse and very knowledgeable as a result about how infectious COVID is. People are given advice about isolating at home, about having separate bathrooms, separate bedrooms, about good cleaning practices, good hand hygiene, wearing masks, and so on. There is nobody there checking up on them to make sure that all of that is being done. This is something that happens in the privacy of a person's home. We do recognize that there has been some household spread in this particular case. I am really interested to see what the CPHO comes up with in her revised...

Yes, thank you. I just start by saying that the CPHO is an independent office within Health and Social Services, so I don't have any information that hasn't already been made public about what happened this week. There was a communications breakdown that led to the announcement of a positive test when it wasn't positive. It was presumptive and has since been confirmed as positive. My understanding is that the first case news release talked about contacts for the travel case, and the second case news release was a household contact of that original travel case. Thank you.

It's my understanding that the new territorial midwifery manager is working on all of these things. There is a standard job description for all registered midwives that is part of the regulatory framework that has already been established, and further, the NTHSSA bylaws have a process for reviewing performance of professional staff. This is the same process that would be used for midwives, as well.