Sandy Lee

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Before I answer that question, I just wanted to comment that the Member mentioned something about that the administration is denying or somehow hiding the deficit. I want everybody to know that we do regular reporting of the deficit situation of the entire structure. Every three months Members get briefed regularly about the deficit situation, so nobody is denying anything about the deficit situation.

Secondly, Mr. Speaker, while I believe it’s important for us to have important discussions here, it is important for us not to be abusive towards the staff. Mr. Speaker, we...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This year we recognized NWT Mental Wellness Week from February 6 to 12, 2011, with the theme Mental Health for Everyone. It is an opportunity to raise awareness about the importance of maintaining good mental health and to work towards reducing the stigma of mental illness.

The NWT celebrates Mental Wellness Week several months earlier than the rest of Canada. We can all appreciate that during the cold dark days of February, good mental health should be on our all our minds.

Mr. Speaker, in Canada, one in five people will experience a mental health issue such as bipolar...

I believe those two issues that the Member raises are part of the review and I hope to have the results by April-May and we can have further discussion on that. After-care is obviously a part of the needs of our community and when we are talking to the people that are delivering it, I’m sure that’s being raised, as well as some of the legislation that might need to be changed.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The focus is to review how we are delivering our mental health services. Over the many months now, Members are talking about the need for more focus on communities. There are those who feel that we could do better with the $6 million that we’re spending through our mental health programming. More recently we’ve had lots of issues being raised about the more acute mental health services being delivered out of Stanton. We are looking with the experts and people involved to see how we can do better what we already do.

I would be happy to make the commitment to ask the staff to maybe start discussing with the Member’s constituency; seeing as we have 30 communities and we can’t start them all at once. I’d be happy to do that.

I do want to note that we are doing some work in the North, as I indicated earlier. We’ve been working with GTC and IRC and we are making some progress in that area. I am planning on making an announcement on that which is more community-based. We are doing that work but we have a vast Territory and we have very regional, different, unique characteristics. I agree with the Member that we...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We have various components of the programs that we have for the issue that the Member is raising. We do provide assistance for residential programming, whether within the NWT, Nats’ejee K’eh, or outside of the NWT or some of the community programs. We have mental health and addictions workers. We’ve spent $6 million and we have 62 people working in that area right up to more acute care right out of the hospital. So we have a vast spectrum of services that we provide on this issue. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, that is going back awhile. I need to look at that, but I am not sure if the business plan that we are working on midwifery is looking at this issue in that way.

As I stated earlier to MLA Bromley, I think what I would like to see is to have midwifery services available especially for women in communities without the full complement of medical and health services that are available in Yellowknife. It is looking at less medical model, medical-based model, which is what we seem to be practicing in both Yellowknife and Smith, but using a more traditional midwifery model that could be...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I believe we have data on birthing by communities. I will undertake to get that information for the Member. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, the plan we are working on is a territorial-wide model. While we have a situation that we have in Yellowknife as the Member described, I also believe that greater benefits could even be had by having some midwifery assisting with delivery of babies in many of our communities where there are not permanent doctors or doctor services. It is one that we need to look at from a territorial-wide perspective and our business plan analysis is looking at that. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

There are no leaks in the hospital. The hospital is the only territorial acute care hospital in the Territory. They deliver services that have deficit inherently built into them, such as medical travel. One of the options we are looking at is to transfer out of that. The medical directors and the CEO are looking at finding efficiencies with the specialist delivery. We are understanding that the deficit at Stanton is not just a Stanton deficit. Stanton takes on a lot of work that is attributable to other authorities.

As I’ve said for the last four days in the budget review, Mr. Speaker, we are...