Sandy Lee

I didn’t know that’s what the Member was referring to. The Member knows already, and I’ve already said that in the standing committee briefing last week and throughout the Committee of the Whole debates, that that’s the direction we need to take. We’re expanding the long-term care facilities in Behchoko from eight beds to 18 beds. We’re going to have an 18-bed facility in Norman Wells. Even in those facilities we could use personal attendants and home support workers.

We want to expand the Home Support Worker Program and Home Care Program in many other regions and communities. Yellowknife, I...

Thank you. Unless the Member has information otherwise, I do believe that the NWT society’s work on elder abuse workshops and conferences over the years has been from the funding from the Department of Health and Social Services and government. We are a close partner with the society in working on elder abuse. They’ve identified that financial abuse is the latest topic that they wanted to work on, and we put in some federal funding and our own funding to do a pan-territorial campaign on elder abuse, which has been quite successful. So, Mr. Speaker, we fund the NWT Seniors’ Society. We also...

Thank you. Because it’s about creating an entire bureaucracy to do something that is already being done by many, many departments in the government. If you look at the entire GNWT -- and the Member’s statement stated that already -- a large part of what we do in Health and Social Services is providing services to seniors and elders, whether it be hospital care, or long-term care, or home care, extra health benefits, a large part of Housing work is providing services to the elders. There are special programs for income support under ECE. Municipal Affairs even is doing Elders in Motion. So the...

As I indicated, I received this about two weeks ago. It’s under review and I will have to get back to the Member in due course. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As the Member stated, he was kind enough to give me a copy of that charter on February 13th, and it is under review. Thank you.

I was not given that request from the NWT Seniors’ Society. I don’t know if the society sent that information to the Member. I’m here ready to work with the NWT Seniors’ Society. I’ve not been given a chance to review those, so if the society has any information that they would like us to look into, we stand ready to look at their request. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Our staff meets regularly with seniors’ groups including the NWT Seniors’ Society. They have very good relationships with them. I was at the elders’ conference in December on elder abuse and I am not aware if they have formally submitted those proposals. They might have but I just don’t have that in front of me. When they do and if they have, we would review them, analyse them and respond to them. Thank you.

We are doing that right now so I’m not sure. A lot of people say, well, when are you going to do that? We are doing that as we speak. We are rolling out a program in Aklavik as we speak. That’s the transition between the Joe Greenland Centre and the program we are going to be offering. We are expanding the Home Care Program there. We want to deliver elders centre day programming there.

The Foundation for Change action plan includes expansion of home care but we need to find the resources to do that and that includes training and that includes having PYs set for home care. We are making that...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I clarified that in my letter to the committee and all the Members on February...actually, this morning. The five committees that we’re talking about in the business plan is to do it the way we’ve been doing it, which is to have no money in it. That’s not new. There have been no monies to set up children and family services committees. Okay? So we will continue to do that. But we have seen very poor results out of that.

I want to say, the CFSA standing committee report said that you would like us to get a lot more aggressive and have a more robust program. You want us...

Placing all of those nurse practitioner grads into our system would require partnership between the department and the government as an employer and the graduating students. I could tell you that we have a history of really good work in employing those nurse practitioners coming out of Aurora College. We have enough nurse practitioner positions within the whole Territory to employ every one of them if they wanted a job. It is difficult to always match nurse practitioners and other health care professionals who graduate from our education system into the exact positions and communities that...