Sandy Lee

Mr. Chairman, as we indicated before, this is relatively new and it is being used in different ways by different authorities. It all depends on the service requirements, the interest even on the part of the people on the ground. I have visited different centres where, for Inuvik for example, they couldn’t say enough about this machine and how much it has helped them. The picture is quite buried all across. It is like any time you introduce a new technology into your service delivery, the uptake and the use is different depending on the regions and the places. I don’t have updated information...

Mr. Speaker, the health of our Northerners begins with each individual choosing to live a healthy lifestyle. An essential part of one’s lifestyle is deciding to make healthy food and beverages a part of everyday life.

The Drop the Pop challenge, now in its fifth year, is a positive way for the Department of Health and Social Services to encourage healthy choices and to raise awareness about the negative effects of too much sugar in one’s diet. Since the inception of the campaign in 2004, we have increased school participation from 13 schools to 40 schools registered this year. I would encourage...

Mr. Chairman, we launched that in a big way, I believe, last fall. So I would be happy to give an update to all the Members as to where we are on that and looking forward as to where we see going for the next year or so.

With respect to the support for seniors, as the Members are aware, the funding for the Senior Games came out of THAF funding and that funding is expiring. The NWT Seniors’ Society has submitted a proposal on how they would like to work with the government on providing support to seniors and creating an opportunity for the seniors to do healthy living. So we’re in the process of...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’ll take the Member’s point, but I think it is really hard to get an accurate comparison to take one part out of the government’s budget, say from 1986 or something, and compare it to ours unless we used the same indicators. So I just want to say, modern medicine and health care have changed so we need to know what is included there. People in Tsiigehtchic, they are connected to roads which is different than some of the other communities in the Territories who are not connected by the road and they still get fly-in nursing service.

Mr. Chairman, I understand his...

No, Mr. Chairman. The Member knows that is not going to be solely my decision. What I meant by that is looking at the demographics territorial-wide and looking at how big our senior populations are, and what ages they are, and knowing all of the other indicators that we, as a government, have to prepare for increasing long-term care beds.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There are a couple of issues that the Member raised. The first one about how services were better back in the ‘80s, I do not have information to either accept that or dispute that. I believe, by and large, this government is able to keep records from basically ‘99-2000, because it’s just hard to make comparisons when we’re talking about information prior to division. Anecdotally, I used to work as an executive assistant of the Minister of Health and Social Services for the entire NWT and I think there were as many issues back then as there are now.

On the issue of...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There is a lot of work being done on this area and I would like to ask the deputy minister to update the Members. Thank you.

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.