Sandy Lee

Once again, I think that dental emergencies are handled as any other medical emergency. I would expect that the health care professional in Fort Liard right now is responding to that situation.

On the larger picture of providing dental services to people in our communities, the service level in the Deh Cho region for the last number of months has suffered because we did not have a service provider. Now, with a new contractor in place, we are hoping we can increase the services there.

On the larger picture, I learned a lot about the requirements for additional dental service, and especially...

It does show up on the page that we’re on, 6-12 under the Hospital Care and Medical Care for Indians and Inuit. Those are the expenditures we are incurring. Then we submit our reimbursements. We will be submitting last year’s reimbursement this year.

We have been going back and forth in the House about some of the actions and interactions the Premier has had with the DIAND Minister and the Prime Minister in his previous role as Minister of Health and Social Services. There are two federal departments involved in this issue. The major one is the DIAND Minister and the Prime Minister, obviously...

Mr. Chairman, those are people who have been notified as affected status. If they choose to do so, they have to submit a resumé and ask to be considered for other options. “Placed” means they have either been placed within the department or government-wide.

The nurse practitioner program in the Northwest Territories has been in place for 11 years. We have seen much progress in Yellowknife. The positions I think the Member may be speaking to, at Stanton.... Those NPs were informed of the fact that there were no permanent positions there. I think it’s incumbent on the employer and employee to work together to see if those positions could be re-profiled to make them available.

If not, as I stated earlier, we as a government want to accommodate NPs to be employed in our Territories, but we couldn’t guarantee employment in a specific setting, in a...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My understanding is that dental emergencies would be handled in the same way as any other medical emergency. When they present themselves to our local health facilities, the health care professionals in those facilities would examine them and make appropriate calls as to the treatment and plan of action. So dental emergencies are considered medical emergencies.

I also appreciate the information the Member has given me about a particular constituent, which I am in the process of following up on.

Mr. Chairman, the Government of Canada under supervision of DIAND department is responsible for funding for insured hospital and doctors’ services to our Inuit and Indian peoples of the Territories.

That’s in line with the practice before the health programming and service delivering was transferred to GNWT in 1988. At that time there was an agreement in place that put a 2 per cent cap on the funding they would provide. How we would do it is that they would provide the services to our aboriginal peoples and then we bill DIAND for those programs. The stats we have available is that since 1999...

I appreciate the Member’s comments. I don’t believe there were questions there.

Mr. Chairman, we have positions for every NP we have in the Territories, and we’ll have more coming, whether we have positions for them. As I said earlier, we may not be able to place them exactly where they want them. It’s like any other northern grads we train. Whether we support lawyers to be trained down south, or doctors, engineers, plumbers.... We, as a government, are committed to hiring these and offering them positions. It’s just that they may not all be able to work at the hospital, or in the exact section they would like to, because you have to respect the right of the operator of...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I do not have information on unfunded positions for authorities. I would be happy to make a commitment to get back to the Member about Stanton.

The analysis of the department and my approach — I say it again and I’ve said it many times — is to minimize the impact on the front-line health and social service workers. For that reason, the largest brunt came in the headquarters positions. I really don’t want us to characterize these affected positions as ones that were not needed or that were not necessary. I think those are positions that had work to do, but under the circumstances and under the fiscal situation, we’ve had to reorganize the staffing to deliver the services but reduce resources where possible. Once again, it’s a choice...