Sandy Lee

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I don’t have the list of legislation that the Member is looking at, but in general I can tell you that the resources for doing legislation is so scarce, not just in the department but with the Justice lawyers, that we wouldn’t be doing anything unless we need to. Sometimes things come up and I can also tell you that those lists have been on the books for a long time. They are making their way up and a lot of work would have been done, not just in this Assembly but in previous Assemblies as well. So I think there’s a constant scrutiny to see what is a priority because...

Yes, I’d be happy to do that. I’ve been communicating with the Minister of DIAND on this issue, as well as the Premier, who had contacted the DIAND Minister on this issue. I would be happy to provide the Member with that correspondence. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This issue was brought up during our visit and I believe we’ve looked into this, but right now I can’t remember what the exact details were. Home care services are important to us and it depends on the needs of the people we need to serve, as well as the part of the training and support that home care workers need. So I will undertake to revisit that file again and see what we can do there. Thank you.

Tuktoyaktuk does have a community wellness worker as well as a mental health and addictions counsellor. As Member Jacobson as well as the community have told us, that they would like to see an enhanced aftercare program in Tuktoyaktuk, especially in light of the fact that they voted to go restricted. I don’t know about the program that the Member is asking. I have to look into that. But I think, as I said, IRC is working with us to use this money to do up pilot projects in Tuktoyaktuk. They want to concentrate on aftercare and family wellness. They are looking into doing family counselling and...

Mr. Chairman, we could provide the Member with that information, but understanding that those vacancies on any given profession like nurses or social workers change constantly. On average, the vacancies for nurses in the Territories is about 30 percent, so Beaufort-Delta will be somewhere near that as well, I would think. But we could get that information for the Member. Thank you.

The agreement is such that there is a set amount of money that they will give us for the medical and hospital services for our aboriginal people. That’s a big chunk of money: $21 million. So every year we do sign the agreement because we do need to have that revenue coming in while we are reviewing the clause to see how we could renegotiate that. There’s not a lot of room for negotiation. It’s a contract that was signed long ago. The terms are quite strict and unilateral in a certain sense.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It includes all of the long-term care facilities in the Territories. Those would be ones attached to long-term care facilities in Simpson, Fort Smith, Hay River, the assisted living facility, the territorial dementia facility. We have a number of long-term care facilities in Inuvik. I can’t remember all of the names, Joe Greenland, the long-term care facility they attached to the Inuvik Hospital there is a long-term care facility for persons with severe physical and mental disabilities in Inuvik actually, that’s part of it. The territorial dementia centre is the only...

Yes.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The fact is, the way our authorities are set up, authorities work as a unit. Authorities hire doctors and nurses, and they have to rotate them and other health care professionals. When a nurse or somebody gets hired by our authority, they’re not necessarily hired into a community but hired as an employee of the authority. Somewhat like a school board; when you get hired in the school board you work in whatever schools they send you to.

As I said already, the Beaufort-Delta Health and Social Services is not alone in not being able to recruit all of the nurses and doctors...

I believe that’s what the agreement is and we will have to continue to look into that to see whether that could be changed or not. I can refer to the deputy minister to see if she wants to add more to that.