Sandy Lee

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.

Mr. Chairman, I will send him a note. Thank you.

The number of 15 cases, that the Member stated, in a population as small as 583 is huge. So I need to get more information on the names and just get more information on that to start with. The department will work with the Deh Cho Health and Social Services Authority to look into this further and be able to get back to the Member on what our next steps could be on that. Thank you.

I’ve not been to Alaska, but I have had the occasion to look at the health care services available in the Yukon. I’ve also had the opportunity to go to Navajo. I have to say that I would compare our care to anybody in Canada. This is not about aboriginal care in our communities, I believe.

As we have already stated, this government spends $326 million. I think our aboriginal people are a power-base in the Territories. They sit on all of the authorities. They are the chairs of our authorities. They have a say on what gets done. This House is made up of aboriginal leaders. If you look at the H1N1...

This is one where we have a longstanding agreement with the federal government. I believe it was signed in early 2000, or somewhere around there. There’s a built-in escalator there at 2 percent. That’s the funding formula that’s being used.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I don’t know if I can add anything more than what I have already said. We are involved. We are part of the responding process for the government through Environment and Natural Resources. Thank you.

Yes, I would be happy to do that and get back to the Member as soon as possible.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I don’t think it’s accurate to say, and in fact I know it’s not true to say, that anybody in the Territory is not getting health care service. Tsiigehtchic does get health care service. They do get doctors’ visits, they do get nursing care, they have a community health rep. So I understand when the Member says that he would like to see more, but that’s not to say that there is no health care in Tsiigehtchic. We share doctors like everybody else does. There are no communities in the Territories other than Yellowknife and Inuvik that have resident doctors. Everybody is...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Is the Member, I don’t see the area that he is talking about on page 8-9... Oh. Could he be more specific?