Sandy Lee

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would not disagree with that. I just want to note that Foundation for Change action plan has a number of priorities and objectives. It’s a three-year plan and there are some areas where we are able to fund it, but we have made it clear from the beginning that those are planned, those are what we want to do, subject to finding resources.

I could provide the Member with what we have in the department on that topic.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As the Minister responsible for Seniors, the issues that MLAs and our residents bring forward to my office pertain to various government departments and programs. I work with the relevant departments and their Minister to resolve some of the issues. I’m not familiar with the particular case that the Member brought up, but I’d be happy to look into the situation and see what we can do and what has been done. Thank you.

I don’t know if there is an administration fee. I know that Stanton provides this service for Sahtu, so I could undertake to do that, but I am thinking that his meaning is does Sahtu have to pay more to get it through Stanton, and clearly that is not the case. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’m assuming that the Member is referring to the Midwifery Program, and the Foundation for Change speaks to coming up with a territorial-wide strategy by the end of next fiscal year. It will take some work and, as I said in committee, we will bring stakeholders and we will review this program. I was just talking about the importance of expanding this, talking about that I personally believe and that is the direction that I am giving to the department, is that we need to look at not just what’s going on right now, which is very heavily medical-based midwifery...

Yes, of course we were.

Mr. Speaker, as the Member knows, the chief has given us a proposal. They have very different ideas, not different ideas but a new idea of making this position work for them. He has asked us to work together jointly in rewriting the job description and hiring. Those are the ideas that I am interested in working with the chief. We also met with a gentleman who is very interested in taking on this work for the community, who is from the community and who lives there.

Mr. Speaker, the timeline is the spring. I would like to, I don’t know... What is spring in the Northwest Territories? March or...

Of course not. What we are talking about is Stanton Territorial Health Authority being a $100 million organization, give or take a few. Sahtu is a $10 million organization. They have been around for five or six years. So it is authorities working together and they do the buying activities with Stanton. So if you are going out to order, I don’t know, birthing beds, it is better if Sahtu just buys one and if, say, Stanton bought ten and one of them is for Sahtu, they don’t have to go through the whole new tendering and contract procedure. But I don’t think Stanton is charging extra money to...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There is no increase in our budget for I don’t think any program. Any of the new initiatives are very specific areas in the strategic investment community initiatives and that was outlined in our opening statement. This is a very status quo budget and that was made very clear by the Minister of Finance when he brought down the budget on day two of the session. But we do understand that delivering the diabetes program to our people is part of our core programming and we do that through our regional offices with the assistance from the knowledge that headquarters can...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It would be part of health promotion.