Michael Miltenberger

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I am aware of a number of proposals, some related to the Salvation Army and their plan to build an addition. The specific project the Member references is not clear enough for me to know if that’s the same one. If there is another one, then I am unaware of it. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to speak today about the significant progress that has been made to incorporate midwifery services into the NWT health system.

Midwives work with women and their families, before, during and after birth to keep them and their babies healthy. Midwifery care is women-centred, family-centred, and responds to the unique strengths and needs of each woman and her family, and honours traditional and cultural birth practices. Midwives monitor the physical, psychological and social well-being of the mother throughout the childbearing cycle into infancy.

In...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we are going to proceed, and we’re going to work with every community to come up with arrangements, alternative or interim as they may be, to ensure that people have the ability to get their beverage containers to a place where they can be compensated. If there’s no depot in that community, then we’ll make arrangements to make sure that people can have those containers taken to a place where compensation can be made.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we’re going to work with individual communities, but my suggestion to everyone is keep your containers and we’re coming.

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Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we have contractual arrangements, in actual fact, with all the doctors. They’re on salary, but they all have contracts. In fact we do, I think, still have four fee-for-service doctors in Yellowknife. So the issue of fee-for-service is a reality that exists in the North and we can’t exclude them from anywhere else, in my opinion, if they exist in Yellowknife. We’ve already accepted that fact. So there’s nothing, in my opinion, to preclude a doctor from setting up a fee-for-service arrangement. We already have the basic process set up in Yellowknife as we...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the Member referenced the fee-for-service and at one point there were fee-for-service doctors who made a decision to switch to salary positions. There have been concerns ever since about productivity issues; we work with the doctors and have tried to address that; we have added more doctors; we are going to continue to work with the doctors and the authorities to recruit.

The Member points out a problem that is an issue, and that is the access to doctors. I can tell you that the constituency that I represent has the same circumstance. I still, on a...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, in fact, we do invest millions of dollars. We had initiated and completed two years of a three-year plan for mental health and addictions. For the third year, we have the funding there and we are taking the time to review where we’ve been, where we are and where is the best direction to go. I have approached the committee for their input. We have also gone to the authorities. We are also going to have Ms. Chalmers, the author of the State of Emergency report that initiated this plan three years ago now, to take a look to see the work that we have done. In...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we are working with a number of groups, and we give all these proposals serious consideration of what fiscal resources may be available to meet such requests. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, in part of the work that has already been done, there has been consultation with communities and service providers, I understand, to get their feedback on the service and how it could best be delivered. But as we proceed towards finalizing any recommendations, we’ll ensure that we have proper consultation both with Members of this House, communities and service providers. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It’s $25,000 more than the community of Fort Smith gets, but less than other communities. But the Member’s point is a good one, that this is an area where there is policy clarification that’s required. Transportation, Municipal and Community Affairs and Health and Social Services identified this some time ago now, and we intend to be able to bring forward a document in the next few weeks that’s going to lay out some options in terms of rationalizing and bringing some clarity to the whole issue of services both for ambulance services response on highways, and the more...