Sandy Lee

Mr. Speaker, I do agree with the Member that this and other initiatives or services or ideas that the government supports has to be made aware on an ongoing basis. When this personal directive, for example, first came out, there was lots of awareness raising, but I do take the Member’s point that it has to be continuous. The department is lending support to the Stem Cell Challenge for example. We will continue to do that. I take the Member’s point that we have to do that on an ongoing basis. I will get back to the Member on how we do that and how we could do this better. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, as the Member is aware, we are a small jurisdiction and our health care facility or system doesn’t do actual organ transplants or anything like that. This is the reason we work with a national body. We are part of the National Registry System. I believe we have a mechanism in place with personal directives as well as driver’s licence, but I need to confirm that, but I believe we are part of that process. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I rise to join my colleagues of the Assembly today to recognize and honour the Honourable Anthony W.J. Whitford as he moves into the next chapter of what has been one extraordinary life. I know he will embark on his next chapter with as much joy, enthusiasm, love of life, love of people and a strong sense of public service.

Mr. Speaker, I don’t think we could measure how much it means to him to be designated as an honourary table officer of this Legislature, as no one loves and can love this Assembly as much as he does and he has done over the years. One only has to see...

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman in question no longer lives here but he is an advocate for government’s action to encourage and promote and raise awareness on organ transplant and organ donation. In fact, he was quite surprised at how advanced our personal directive legislation was. He asked for a copy of that because that legislation goes further than other jurisdictions in terms of making options available through living will and personal directives so that people can make choices about whether or not they want to donate organs while they are able to make those decisions, and is not done in the...

My understanding is that if any of those residents could arrive at a repayment plan with the Housing Corporation, their eviction notice could be set aside, and those repayment plans can be for very modest amounts. So if that were to happen, that would avoid eviction.

Mr. Speaker, our staff do work with the Housing Corporation and other agencies to come up with a plan to help if it’s necessary. I would be willing to make sure that our staff in the region knows and sees what resources they could provide. Thank you.

Yes, I will check my notes from that tour and I will review the situation again and I will look at all options to see what is available to us and the Sahtu authority, in consultation with the local leadership. Thank you.

We did tour all of the Sahtu communities and there were a number of issues like this, because Sahtu Health Authority have combined duties of different positions and they’ve had to move positions around to make sure that they are able to use their existing human resource services to provide the services necessary. So I will undertake to take this question about the permanent social worker in Tulita and acquire more information on it and get back to the Member in short order. Thank you.

There is some public interest consideration here. We do need to supply, the Beaufort-Delta needs to supply the medical supplies to these four isolated or off-the-road communities. We need to meet the barge deadline. The tender was out for 20 days. The authority made sure that one major supplier that hadn’t responded was contacted with the information so that everybody had a chance to respond.

Like I stated already, there have been a half dozen inquiries onto the website. The authority did more and went above and beyond to make sure the competition was fair.

The Member is correct that the detailed information on products were catalogue numbers. But we do have a situation where we’ve had a number of businesses responding to this RFP. It would be unfair to those businesses that are interested and have responded, to cancel the RFP now. The Beaufort-Delta Health Authority is aware that they need to do a better job of describing the products and they will do that.

We also have a situation where these are for medical supplies that need to go to communities of Tuktoyaktuk, Paulatuk, Ulukhaktok and Sachs Harbour, and they have to meet the barge deadline...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, Health and Social Services is always there. We are the ones that receive people who, next to income security, are in need of us, so we will be there to help them. I’m not familiar with the details of the families, but if the families were evicted and they were in need of our services, our workers will be there to help them. Thank you.