Sandy Lee

Mr. Speaker, yesterday I stated in the House that we would like to have the full complement by the end of March, either by locums or by other means, but we are hoping we could do it sooner than that, if at all possible.

Mr. Speaker, all eight communities in the Beaufort-Delta Region are on a regular course of business. They do have the full nursing and primary health care services, including nurse practitioners and nurses.

We are not able to have doctors make regularly scheduled visits to communities as they usually have done, once or twice a month. Right now the community health nurses and nurse practitioners have to rely on doctors’ services by phone.

We are working hard to fill the positions with the locums and to have more doctors in place in that region as soon as possible. We do understand this is a very...

Mr. Speaker, as the House is aware, there are currently negotiations going on between the doctors and the government, so I have to refrain from commenting on anything like that. But I could advise the Member, Mr. Speaker, this is not really…. This is an unusual circumstance, where we are operating with about half of the normal complement of doctors. It is a situation which we are working to fix.

In the general term and in the long term, the department continues to work to improve our packages and our working conditions and training opportunities and everything else to make this place an...

Mr. Speaker, I'd like to send congratulations to all the correctional officers in particular. There are many people in the gallery, and I don't want to recognize anybody twice.

I just want to recognize Mr. Walter Orr, who is a constituent of mine and an engineer with Ferguson Simek Clark.

The telehealth program is in the process of being expanded. In Nunakput, we have services available, and in Inuvik, Ulukhaktok, and I believe we put a new one in Tuktoyaktuk. There’s a lot of services being rendered through the telehealth system. However, we hope to expand those services as well.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the Member for the question.

Mr. Speaker, we are experiencing a very unusual situation, even within the environment of pressures we normally feel, in terms of shortages of health care professionals.

We are short of four doctors in Nunakput, and it’s because two of them…. Well, we normally have about eight, and we’re funded for nine. But we’re operating with about five, because two doctors have left to practise elsewhere and two are currently on leave.

So the Beaufort-Delta authority has made a choice of something that they’ve never done before, which is to not be able to have...

As the city of Yellowknife and the N.W.T. prepare for the more than 1,800 athletes, coaches and visitors who will be coming to Yellowknife for the Arctic Winter Games, more than 200 health care professionals are being organized to staff the Arctic Winter Games Clinic.

Registered nurses, nurse practitioners, licensed practical nurses, doctors, massage therapists and physiotherapists will provide their services at the clinic each day from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. The clinic will be located at the Multiplex in Yellowknife. Each sport’s venue will have a radio dispatcher who will be in contact with a...

We’ve been very busy with a lot of things. One of the things we are working on is some new initiatives and new ideas in time for the next business plan process. As a new Minister in a new government and Minister Responsible for the Status of Women, it’s something that I’d like to look into further. Hopefully within the next two or three months we can have some documents to review and discuss.

Mr. Speaker, first I’d like to thank the Member for the statement, which sounded like music to my ears.

Mr. Speaker, on the question the Member is asking, I have to say that my understanding…. I don’t have all the detailed information with me on the gender-based analysis, but it’s something that has been going on in many different jurisdictions. Also, there has been some work been going on by previous governments. I’m going to have to make a commitment now that I’d be happy to look into that and come back to the Member to see where we are with that.

Mr. Speaker, I think one thing we should be aware of is the fact that adoptions of any kind — and that includes custom adoptions — make an arrangement between a parent and child more like the natural parent and child relationship, in that once you adopt a child, you become responsible for all of their financial issues and other responsibilities that a natural parent would. The adoption process legalizes that relationship. This is a question that often comes up in cases comparing foster-parent situations to adoption. Once you adopt a child or if a grandparent adopts a child, a lot of financial...