Julie Green

Yes, thank you. There's been issues with the contract with Poundmaker's Lodge. They initiated the cancellation of their contract and that takes effect at the end of October. There were a number of contractual issues that relate to services not being delivered as contracted. I'm personally disappointed that this relationship is not stronger. I have met many people in my life who have been to Poundmaker's and who have been very satisfied with the services that they've received there and have achieved longterm sobriety, which I think is the goal that we all are hoping for. So I have committed to...

Yes, I think that's a size by volume. And Mr. Heath can tell you what that means in something more commonly used like square feet.

Yes, thank you, Madam Speaker. Madam Speaker, the Department of Finance staff, I'm told, will be meeting with the graduating class of licensed practical nurses next week to discuss the benefits of working with the GNWT. And in addition, NTHSSA and human resources staff will be meeting with the current college nursing students, set to graduate next year, on November 29th and will provide conditional job offers at that time. The trip from conditional offer to indeterminate position involves making sure that all the requirements of the position are filled, such as graduate certification...

Yes. There has been some investment in this project already. We thought we had a secure location and a secure budget for it. But much has changed in the last year. And so that's my general thought on that question. But I'll ask the assistant deputy minister if she would like to add some additional information.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. This year, the health and social services system is offering a Health and Social Services bursary program which will provide bursary funding to Indigenous and northern students to help support them as they pursue a career in health and social services. We are targeting that group of students because we believe there is greater opportunity for retention.

It's just worth noting that the Aurora College currently has an intake in the nursing program of 30 seats a year. The majority of them are, in fact, from the NWT, or have lived here for some period of time before that...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll ask Mr. Heath to answer that, thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And I appreciate the question. I don't see it as a binary situation here. The specified conditions' list covers 54 diseases. If you have ALS, as one example, you're not on that list. You're not getting any help from the government of the NWT. So the starting point was to make the program more equitable for people who not only have drug costs for chronic conditions but they also don't have any drug coverage at all. So that means for the most basic things like antibiotics. So the thing about this is that people and their conditions don't fit into these little silos very...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the Department of Health and Social Services is working to make the extended health benefits more equitable. And we put out a number of products here, a discussion paper at FAQ, and a plain language summary, which talks about the supplementary health benefits for low income people, and a drug program for catastrophic costs. The amount of money we're spending right now on this, the 54 specified disease conditions, is $4.3 million, and that's for 1,514 individuals. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, first of all, the Member has raised this issue about cancer drugs, and I want to give him a specific answer to this. If somebody has cancer and they're receiving treatment in a hospital, those drugs are provided to the person without any means testing or any charge. If after the cancer treatment there is a prescription that is preventative, like tamoxifen for breast cancer, then that is part of the specified condition list, and it would be captured in this new program. So, again, in response to his points, there is there is consideration for a drug benefit...

Thank you. We're in the information gathering phase, and I'm gratified to say we've been getting a lot of feedback. So we don't have a specific model that we can apply costing to. But given the fact that we're going to include more benefits for more people, we expect the program to cost more. Thank you.