Julie Green

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thank you to the Member for Frame Lake for the question. Once a suicide attempt has taken place, the first step is to assess whether the person requires medical treatment and, as part of the medical treatment, whether the person would benefit from being certified under the Mental Health Act. That would be hospital route. The non-hospital route is to speak with the individual, determine that admission to the hospital is not necessary, and then do a risk assessment with them.

When it is deemed safe for the person to leave the hospital, they take with them a safety plan...

It is my understanding that the consultation on the new bed projections is about to begin next month with, in fact, a trip to Hay River to talk to people there about the findings and to verify those numbers on the ground. We have not done that in advance. The study that was done was done by the Bureau of Statistics. They are not using qualitative information; they are using quantitative information about the size of the population, the health of the population, where they live, and so on and so forth. That is not the kind of document that we would normally expect them to consult on. We just...

Just to provide some numbers for turnover, this is for March 31, 2020, the turnover rate at the NWT Health and Social Services Authority was 15 percent. For the GNWT as a whole it was 13.2 percent. Our turnover rate at the health authority is on par with the government as a whole. The NTHSSA does not offer retention bonuses at this point. All the compensation and benefits that nurses and health professionals earn are part of the current collective agreement with the UNW. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thank you to the Member for Hay River South for that question. What has changed is a greater amount of data about actual use has allowed us to quantify the age and stage of the people who are entering long-term care facilities. We have actual information to rely on. In 2015, those were truly projections based on bed ratios for age. What we have now is actual versus projected. That is why those two numbers are different, what was required in 2015 and what was required in 2020. Thank you.

The Northwest Territories Health and Social Services system has created a human resource development plan. They've done that with the Department of Finance, and it's my understanding that exit surveys will be reviewed as a potential action item in this area so that we can provide the kind of information that the Member is talking about and gain a greater understanding of why nurses do choose to leave.

My expectation is that the Emerging Wisely plan will be revised, and as the Member for Great Slave suggested, it will be a living document. There are so many variables that go into the CPHO's decision about risk assessment that it needs to be a living document, and it will be a living document. Putting a firm timeline on when we're going into phase 3 is very difficult to do, especially as the country now looks at locking down in other places because of the emergence of variants. Certainly, the idea of looking at phase 3 is to get ourselves ready for fewer restrictions.

It's important for the Member to understand that machines don't work without the people to operate them. In this case, you need respiratory technicians to operate ventilators. We have enough supply for the number of emergency beds that we have. We are very fortunate not to have needed that more than a couple of times during this whole outbreak. We are confident that we are securely placed to deal with a COVID outbreak in the event there is one. Thank you.

I think it is really important to note, first of all, that we are not locked down. The borders are open. Hundreds of people cross the borders every single day. We have approved something like 35,000 self-isolation plans. People are not locked in or out of the NWT, but there are some guidelines in place for them coming and going. Since last year, of course, we have made significant increases in the capacity and resourcing of our healthcare system to be in a position to respond to COVID. Although we did not have a lot of hospital cases, we wanted to be ready for that. We have allocated over $30...

I'm not sure if the department has specifically considered that scenario. If it's independent living, it sounds like this would be part of the Housing Corporation's offerings for seniors' housing. Obviously, it would be our intention to keep couples together. They should be together at the end of their lives, as they have been through their lives, and so we would want that to happen. However, how that is going to look in long-term care, I'm not really sure how that's going to look, whether there will be suites available to accommodate couples rather than rooms for single people.

I find it hard to answer a huge hypothetical there that crosses many different departments. What I want to say is that I appreciate that people, that residents in the NWT, the Members of this House, want to return to normal gatherings, normal ways of doing business, and normal ways of visiting family that they knew a year ago. I am keen on that, as well. My hope is that the rationale for easing the restrictions internally and externally will be made known to the public by the end of April. Thank you.