Sandy Lee

It’s good to know that the Member agrees that we’re doing a good job, I just never heard her saying that. On page 11 of the Auditor General’s report, paragraph 29, the Auditor General said, “We found that contribution agreements between the department and the authorities included basic financial terms and conditions and corresponding reporting requirements. Current agreements specify that authorities shall use their contribution funds for categories of expenditures, including hospital services, physician services, medical equipment…” Basically the Auditor General is saying that our financial...

We have lots of anecdotal statements from those who use midwives to tell us how well that works, but we also believe that the Midwifery Program we have right now is too heavily medically-based, so we are going to be looking at the experience and examples of Nunavut, where they have come up with a model that is less medically based.

We also, as the Minister and the department, would like to see the Midwifery Program expand outside of Yellowknife, because Yellowknife has a lot more service from physicians and health care providers, but we would like to explore a model in regional settings where...

Because, Mr. Speaker, we have to be serious about the complexities of the budgeting process, the business plan process and the work required to give birth to a full-fledged Midwifery Program. As that letter indicated, we are reviewing the Midwifery Program and analyzing the cost requirements for 2011 and 2012 with a view to putting it into the fiscal year 2013-14.

Mr. Speaker, our department is doing the work that’s required to see what kind of resource requirements that we need to undertake in order expand the Midwifery Program we have. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to take this opportunity to recognize a Page from Range Lake. Her name is Kathleen Gordon and she’s been here for a number of days and I’d like to thank her for her wonderful work.

We have responded to all of the recommendations from the Auditor General. We accept those recommendations and we take that as on top as a pat on the back, these are the things that you could do to do even better. I just need to make that point clear, because our department and our staff and the management all across the Territories are working so hard to get the evaluation that we received from the Auditor General.

Mr. Speaker, on paragraph 24 of the Auditor General’s report she says, “Finally...” in the contribution agreement “they identify some performance indicators to assess the success of...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In the understated language of the Auditor General, the report that we received from Sheila Fraser is a Gold Medal Performance Report. I am so proud of the way she recognized the great work that we are doing. She’s told us that the Foundation for Change Action Plan lays out clear direction and goals and action plans to the authorities. She’s also indicated that we consult regularly and well with the authorities and it is due to the management and the staff of the department and the front-line authorities that we were able to achieve such a glowing report from the...

I hope the young debaters watching us in the House can carry their debates without using a word like “pitiful” and some silly words like that, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, we take this work of reviewing the Midwifery Program very, very seriously. We only fund two positions in Fort Smith, which is not an ideal situation. We also have a situation in Yellowknife where we have one midwife. Mr. Speaker, I can assure the House that we are doing an in-depth review of this and we believe that we need a comprehensive, wide-ranging program to make a real business case for real dollars. We believe that we...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member is quoting two different letters and without knowing the specific context of what we were speaking to in 2009 and 2011, I think it’s unfortunate that he’s making such a generalization.

I want to just state for the record that I, as the Minister, and the department have been very clear that we support expansion of the Midwifery Program in the Northwest Territories. The program has been under stress because we had to go through renewing the THAF funding, which is from the money that we fund the Midwifery Program now. The next phase that we are working on for...

Thank you. I can tell you right now he’s not going to like this answer, but perhaps he might understand if I tell him that I can’t necessarily write to everybody who writes to my office. There are some people who write to my office that has to do with operational and administrative issues. When it has to do with the regulating practice, often on many issues I write personally to all the MLAs that write to me, I respond to constituents, but there are issues where it’s operational and it is within my responsibility to assign staff to meet with them. So in this situation I assigned the staff to...

Mr. Speaker, I don’t have a problem meeting with anybody who wants to meet with me, but I want to assure the public and the Members here that we respond to inquiries that we get from the public and this specific issue in question, we have responded. I have asked staff to meet to explain what the rules are and what the government has in place in terms of the work that we are doing to regulate some of the professions. We have been open and communicating. Thank you.