Sandy Lee

Mr. Chairman, I know the Member... This is one of the number of items that we discussed in the standing committee. I just want to make it clear that, as I stated yesterday, I am fully committed to looking at all of the suggestions that the committee made yesterday.

I just need the committee to understand that the response is government’s response and any changes or reconsiderations of budget will be a Cabinet direction. Our department is analyzing those recommendations right now. I will get back to the committee on how we go about with the options. I am not trying to evade; I understand what...

Yes, please. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I need to have my deputy minister give the information, as it’s operational.

Thank you. We are in communication with the graduating class of nurses at Aurora College. They are made aware that they wouldn’t be applying for jobs on the website, that they will be eligible to join the Graduate Employment Program process, that we will have a list of jobs available for them. HR and HSSA, Department of Health staff, are going in there to talk to the nursing graduates and we will be working with them to find placements for them. They will be asked to give their preference of what communities they would like to practice in. We want to match those, but those are not always...

Thank you. I just want to thank the Member for the comment. Yes, this is an ongoing challenge that we need to work on, but I just want to add to our discussions here some of the things that people involved with the Family Violence Coalition, Lydia Bardak was on the radio this morning speaking about… We rely on NGOs to help us with this. I think the government has undertaken a number of initiatives to combat family violence at different levels, whether it be through the courts or enhancing shelter money, working with children who witness violence, there’s an initiative to work with men who...

Mr. Speaker, I don’t think there is any disagreement between the Member and myself that there are more demands than resources available. I am thinking that the Member is thinking that I should just go and build some more or something like that.

The way the programs are being delivered, we have lots of providers. We have NGOs who have group homes. We don’t build housing. It is really about resources. It is not about lack of policy or programs or intent. We have more demands and supply and on a case-by-case basis, we work on our residents and we assess them. We place them where we can and we try...

As I stated, there is no substantial increase to anything in our budget because it’s, as people have called it, a status quo maintenance kind of budget under our fiscal circumstance.

With respect to suicide prevention work, we are doing some new work under this initiative. We have obtained some funding with the Mental Health Commission, which is a body set up nationally, and we’ve been getting some money for the last couple of years. This year we will be flowing $460,000 in federal funding for community-based suicide prevention projects. One of the initiatives that we are embarking on is to set...

Mr. Speaker, I agree with the Member that the programs are spread out, but I don’t think it is there without mandate. I think all of our seniors programs have specific programming and criteria mandate that are housed in responsible divisions and sections.

Mr. Speaker, once again, I am interested in looking at what he has in mind. Maybe it is something that the Standing Committee on Social Programs can take a look at as well. Mr. Speaker, I look forward to seeing what he has. Thank you.

I’m happy to note that that increase of $1 million under prevention and promotion services speaks to Healthy Choices Framework and Healthy Families programming that I spoke about earlier, and Fort Simpson is one of them.

On the social worker question, I am committed to following up on that. I agree with the Member that we need to know what the status of the current incumbent is. We were not able to fill the position with a casual just because… I mean, they have social work coverage, it’s just that to have a position there, because this position requires to have all kinds of statutory powers...

Mr. Speaker, now I see where he is getting at. Okay. Mr. Speaker, we have a lot of success in HR training for health care professionals. We graduated 11 nurses last year. We are expecting 19. We are expecting way more over the next couple of years. CHNs, as the Member stated, we have trained them and we have placed them in communities. I would be happy to undertake to get that information for the Member. I think actually now we have embarrassment of riches for nurses because we have been so successful with the Nursing Program.

As we go forward, what we see now is we need more community support...