Sandy Lee

Mr. Speaker, as I stated, I would be happy to get detailed information and get back to the Member, as well as finding out perhaps a process in place that people could inquire to. I will get back to the Member. Thank you.

Of course not. I could tell you that under NWT funded programs, under Healthy Food for Learning Education, Culture and Employment provides: $94,685 for Beaufort-Delta; $6,867 for Commission Scolaire; $50,488 for Deh Cho; $49,000 for Tlicho; $44,000 for Sahtu; $64,000 for South Slave; $23,989 for YCS; $45,000 for YK1. That’s just one column. I could provide the Member with the list. While we speak about the need to do things, I think we should be careful about just sweeping generalizations, saying that in a very kind of very mean way, I must say.

A large part of the work that we do in the Department of Health and Social Services is health promotion. Our staff is out there promoting healthy eating habits, dangers of child obesity, just eating healthy and not abusing things that are harmful to us. The pre-natal and post-natal health; there is so much work we do. In the past the government has reduced the power rates in the communities and that really helps with the cost of food in our smallest communities. As well, we have increased food mail programs. Not food mail, food basket. I think it’s important that we understand that there are...

I think I can safely state that just for our department there are lots of NGOs that we fund that are delivering many, many really substantive programming, like YWCA, Sally Ann, all of our...I don’t know. I don’t want to exclude anybody. They have the stability of funding. All those applications do not come up to my office where I need to review them. So I think we need to accept that there are different types and sizes and characters of NGOs and I want to assure the Member that I don’t micromanage in that way. This is why I just want to undertake to look at this situation and see what happened...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Listening to her questions as well as the Member’s statement, I want to say first off that we do provide multi-year funding to organizations. We review them on a case-by-case basis. So I want to state that to start with.

There are two issues the Member is raising. One is there are some specific situations here that happened with respect to this organization whereby they asked to make adjustments specifically, and I would like to look into that and I can commit to look into those details and see how we could accommodate. Secondly, I will undertake also to see if we could...

Mr. Speaker, I need to first get the information. I am not sure if I will be talking to the Minister on a specific situation like that, but I would be happy to inquire on the basis of facts to get the answer for that specific situation and, in terms of a process, where could a person go to inquire when something like that happens.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to recognize two doctors in the gallery. One is our very own CPHO, public health officer, Dr. Kami Kandola, and the other is Dr. Lorne Clearsky, who is visiting us for three days with the possibility of working up here. I’m not sure if he’s decided, but as the Minister of Health I’m just saying that this is a very exciting environment in which to practice medicine. It can be challenging but very rewarding, and when the Deh Cho Bridge is built, it’s going to beautiful, and we might even throw in free Internet. Mr. Speaker, if I...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Further to my returns to written questions earlier today I wish to table the following three documents entitled NWT Women Giving Birth - Number of Discharges In and Outside of the NWT 2005-2006 to 2009-2010; Program Enrolments and Graduates for All Nursing Programs Between 1998 and 2011; and Bachelor of Science in Nursing, Enrolments by Ethnicity and Year, 2006-2011.

We are talking about I think two things here. On both counts we are doing a review. One, the Member is aware of the mental health and addictions review that we are undertaking as an entire mental health programming at the hospital as well as in communities. We acknowledge that there is room for improvement in that area and we have hired a study team, consulting team who have been here and talked to the stakeholders. We’re looking forward to having recommendations on that to improve our Mental Health and Addictions Program as a whole.

With respect to the psychiatric unit, every incident where...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. That’s a pretty broad question. Being a facility that it is and the services it provides, there are any number of processes in place to review incidents and happenings at the hospital. If the Member wants to be more specific, I can try to address those.