Sandy Lee

I’m sorry, Mr. Chairman, are we still on 8-17?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. On this issue, I, as Minister, committed to the Standing Committee on Social Programs to seek input from the public, obviously. I have just had a substantive update on that. I am going to be seeking to go to Cabinet for Cabinet input. I will also be seeking to go to the Standing Committee on Social Programs as soon as we can organize that. We are ready to do that now and also we need to have consult with the public working group on that. So we are in the process of communicating that to the standing committee, so we can give the committee members an update and seek...

Mr. Chairman, I could tell you that this is something that is of interest to us. It does take two parties to negotiate. We will continue to encourage Nunavut to come to the table on this issue. I will be talking to Minister Curley on this issue as the DMs have been working on it for the last while. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Member is right; we do get people dropping in our health centres and hospitals. Anyone who doesn’t have an NWT health card, they would be billed to their host provinces and territories and the billings are determined by national agreements that we talked about earlier. There’s a very set number of dollars that we are allowed to bill each other. So the money is recouped. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just want to advise the Member that much of what he’s saying is something that we have been discussing and working with and it’s part of the Foundation for Change plan in that we understand that we need to work on the larger framework, like the governance and delivery models but the focus in delivery needs to still be at the community level.

As mentioned earlier by the deputy minister, the recruitment and retention of physicians, registered nurses, nurse practitioners, for example, we have 68-plus positions and we have about 20 vacancies. While we are trying to...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I know the Member is good, but I don’t know how he got dental care into primary care, but, anyway, I’d be happy to answer him with the information. This dental issue in general comes up everywhere I travel. It is a big issue for our community people, but it’s important for people to know that dental care is not a responsibility of the GNWT. It is not an insured service. It is the federal government that provides dental care to our aboriginal peoples. The non-aboriginal people in the Territories, they get dental coverage by their own insurance. Dental care is not part...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. To my left is deputy minister of Health and Social Services, Paddy Meade; and, to my right is director of finance, Mr. Derek Elkin. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, I understand his question. I don’t think we can get him that level of detail, in that I don’t think that right now we are keeping, okay, how many hours are we using this. The tools are out there. We are trying to provide the support and training so that more people will use it. As I stated earlier, we will be evaluating and monitoring this program and we will give an update and promise that to MLA Yakeleya too. I will give him a profile of where the machines are right now, where we are going to get more out of and what kind of services are being provided through these tools...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I wish to table the following two documents entitled NWT Hospital Satisfaction Report and Community Health Services Satisfaction Report. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I can advise you that I have, on a number of occasions, been invited by the NWT Seniors’ Society and I have met with them. We share a meal and we, sort of, have a roundtable and they tell me all the things that they want me to work on in terms of seniors’ issues. The NWT Seniors’ Society has membership. The board of directors has membership from all regions of the Territories. They did bring up the issue of a seniors secretariat and they have told us and, in fact, they have written to us to say that they understand that the resources are limited. They understand that to create an...