Julie Green

I have no way of knowing whether there are going to be additional cases. There was some contact tracing going on, I haven't seen the results of that. If there are additional cases as a result of that the public will be notified through the public health advisory process which we used last week through the Office of the Chief Public Health Officer.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thank you to the Member for the question. The issue here is that our rapid testing machines are not validated for positive tests because we've had so few positive tests. In fact, none since these machines were procured. The situation is that we need to have them validated by the Alberta lab. There is some transportation time. Then, we get into the queue in the Alberta lab, and they provide us with the results. As soon as those results are known, we will inform everyone via public health advisory, the way we did on Friday with the presumptive cases. I can't speed it up...

Certainly, I can commit to that approach. It's a common-sense approach, to meet people where they are at, where they congregate, and to talk to them there about what kinds of supports they need or referrals. I know that, often, in the shelters, medical practitioners do visit, counselors do visit, or people can have appointments at medical facilities. This is something we're very interested in doing, is meeting clients where they are at in order to provide them with the services they need.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The answer to this question really depends on a number of variables. The person who wants to go into treatment starts by discussing that possibility with their doctor, nurse practitioner, counsellor, or a health professional of that kind. They then take a look at what needs to be in place to access the facilities. There is a new assessment now for COVID that has to be completed. There are questions whether medical detox will be required. There are some variables there that need to be worked out. Then, the person applies to the facility and gets an answer about how long...

I don't have an answer to the Member's question.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thank you to the Member for the question. There is a protocol in the Office of the Chief Public Health Officer that a team who are trained to do contact tracing then figure out who the contacts are and then confidentially call those people and make them aware that they are a contact of somebody who has tested positive. They give them advice on the next steps to take in the event that that has happened.

I'm not exactly sure what kind of investigation you're asking for an update on. I don't have any more information to share than what I just said.

Thank you for that question. This is an area in which I need to take a little time to think about how this might be applicable. We have the child and youth care counsellors and the Community Counselling Program, and I think they operate within offices. They don't go out to on-the-land camps or other types of settings. The question is: how would we make that work better? I think it's a really good question, and I look forward to working with the Member to figure out how that can be implemented. Thank you.

What the department of health has done is really had the Indigenous organizations take the lead on on-the-land treatment by having a pot of money for them to apply for in order to provide programming where they want to and in what form they want to. This is a fund that is easy to apply for and which has few restrictions on the way that money is spent. In terms of other kinds of after-care, such as AA, that doesn't exist in every community. Some communities don't feel there is enough confidentiality to offer AA. There are apps for the phone. There are client surveys every two years, which look...

Thank you for the point that we should be working together. I completely agree. What we're doing about homecare is that in June of this year, the Minister of the time tabled the home and community care review, and it made 22 recommendations for improving home and community care in the Northwest Territories. A number of recommendations have been accepted and implementation work is under way. Some of the other recommendations are dependent on other program evaluation, like the paid caregiver program.

What we're doing here is trying to, I'm going to say, rationalize homecare so that there is a...