Sandy Lee

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...

I’m going to try to tackle this and if there is any technical backup, my DM can jump in.

Mr. Chairman, first of all, telehealth and telespeech, we’re not talking about two different projects. It really is a communication machine. It’s about delivering health care and related services like speech therapy through a TV screen connected to a service provider, whether it be a speech language therapist or a radiologist or even a physician. It is a distance health care delivery method. I can tell you that, I know for a fact, I saw with my own eyes new machines sitting in Deline, Good Hope, even...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Just to jog the memory of everybody here, Mr. Speaker, the Strategic Initiatives committees were set up at the beginning of this Assembly in order that our government could work across the departments to advance the priorities that were set out by the 16th Assembly. All of the work that we have been doing in these committees -- and there were five committees set up: Building Our Future, Managing This Land, Reducing the Cost of Living, Maximizing Opportunities and Refocusing Government -- had been added to the budgets that we have considered and approved, both in O and M...

I am afraid I am not on the inside of Minister Flaherty or Minister Stockwell who is now the new Treasury chair. I can tell you that Nunavut government, Yukon government and this government have worked hard, methodically and substantively to get this program renewed. The proposal we have is asking for about $200 million because we want to build in the escalator. There has been a working group of assistant deputy ministers of health of all three governments. We have the Yukon, Nunavut and myself; Ministers over the last two years have had meetings with the Minister of Health. In the most recent...

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. Much of what the deputy minister said in terms of the work we are doing on the governance model and role clarity, that does deal with the thing that the MLA Krutko just brought up. We are working to strengthen accountability in service delivery and financial accountability plus I’m just saying this in my own language here, but it’s written in a more fancy way in the book... We are working for service accountability, financial accountability and coordination accountability.

Right now, the way our authorities are set up, they are quite independent. They get bulk funding...

Mr. Chairman, I remember looking at that very closely as a Regular Member too, so the minute I came into this office I reviewed that. Since then, my understanding of the contract is, we have to go back to the history of this, but I think the agreement was signed by the Minister at the time of 11th or 12th Assembly and it is a pretty clear cut, short agreement on how much the federal government is willing to pay for the doctor service and hospital service for our aboriginal people. There’s not a whole lot of negotiating clauses built into that. It is renewable every year, so it is either we don...