Sandy Lee

Mr. Speaker, there are about four things that the Member said he had heard. I can’t confirm or deny. I don’t know. That is just the information he has, Mr. Speaker. What I am saying is we are committed to hiring and expanding the Nurse Practitioner Program. We are committing to Aurora College $511,000 that we have in the past. My understanding is that IAP program did not have enrolment interest and that is the reason why Aurora College is not delivering that program today. Thank you.

I hear what the Member is saying. I will undertake to look to see what we have for capital items for Colville Lake, but that’s not part of this budget we are dealing with here, so I do not have that information readily available. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to first off commend the Member for saying that he will participate in the V-Day events and I would be happy to cooperate with the Member on that event. Secondly, I am not sure if I could give him exact reasons why we are experiencing increased numbers of family violence, but we do keep detailed statistics on that. Thirdly, this government has increased funding and programs in the family violence area in many different ways over the last three years. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I will undertake to provide him with the first package and then go from there. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, I say that is a good example of how simply and straightforwardly we put our action plan.

Mr. Speaker, we see a vision in the Northwest Territories where we will have more families getting assistance from this government as to how they could get respite care and get a break. In doing that, Mr. Speaker, we have expanded the respite care program to include NWT-wide. We have enhanced funding and it is in this year’s budget for $75,000, and as Members have stated, we are working on a territorial-wide respite care program. That is new because before we only had a respite care program in...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There was a lot there that the Member has raised so we will have to get back to the Member with more detailed information.

I haven’t seen the latest information on agency nurses, but the last stats I saw, I believe, showed that it is something that should get a lot more positive light on. We have substantially reduced the use of agency nurses by a huge amount. That was, I think, the latest stat about six months ago. I need to get the information for the Member, but over the last three to five years we have substantially, 60 to 80 percent reduction in agency nurse use...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member is right; I had responded to him on this issue on November 12th last year. There were specific personnel details involved with this position that made it difficult to fill the position at that time, but it has been three months since. I would be happy to undertake to see where we are at and get back to him. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I can tell you that we are intimately involved with giving financial advice and interaction with the authority. I think a large part of the time that the director of finance sitting next to me is spent on working on financial issues. As well, this government and this Cabinet directed the department and the authorities to provide detailed financial information, more detailed than ever before, and, lastly, we have undertaken a step where we have now a financial contribution agreement with authorities that lays out in detail the financial expectations of each authority...

I don’t know if we have had specific requests or information seeking that position, but I could undertake to try to get some stats on what kind of feedback we have received on practicenorth.ca website. Thank you.

The Foundation for Change is an action plan that requires direction and intent and spirit. I say again, Children and Family Services Act review of the standing committee we agree with the recommendations. We support the recommendations. We have agreed to implement 61 out of 73 recommendations. The 10 that we’re not able to, the exact way that the committee has recommended, we say in our reply how we are going to go about them.

As I said, I realize it’s not the answer that the Member is looking for, but we see nothing in the recommendations from the report that’s not in line with what the...