Tom Beaulieu

Mahsi cho, Mr. Speaker. Yes, the thought is to return to a board structure for the Hay River Health and Social Services Authority. As the Member knows, we are in the process of constructing a new health centre and we’re hoping to be able to provide some medical services to surrounding communities. So once we’ve determined the full scope of what that specific health centre can provide to the surrounding areas, then we are going to talk more with the staff and the public administrator to determine what type of board structure we should have in place for Hay River Health and Social Services...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. To my right I have Thomas Druyan, legislative council, and to my left, Gillian Burles, senior policy advisor, legislation.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am pleased to introduce Bill 21, An Act to Amend the Dental Profession Act.

This bill will amend the Dental Profession Act to make the supervision of dental students more practical for the NWT. It is our hope that dental students who take advantage of the opportunity to work for a term in a northern community will return upon completing their dental degree.

We also made minor changes to the act such as changing the term of “secretary” to that of “registrar.” This amendment will also allow the Minister to appoint a registrar who will be responsible for registering all...

Thank you. Unfortunately, I do not have the exact date of when we are going to make changes to the Medical Travel Policy. We have someone currently working on it. I don’t know of the timelines, but I am prepared and willing to provide that information to the Members as soon as I can. Before the end of session I can provide the timelines. Thank you.

There should be. If the health professional is not able to communicate with the individual, then there should be somebody else there that can provide assistance to the individual and the health profession to ensure communication. I’m afraid what the Member is bringing up is correct. Sometimes elders will just get the information and then go down south. What we can do is, in cases where individuals are travelling to and from, we can alert Larga. For example, if they are in Inuvik, Vital Abel is available if they are here, to make sure that the people understand when they are going back home or...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Health and Social Services Professional Act is something that the Member is aware that we are going through 19 different acts, including the Dental Auxiliaries Act. That is something that we are looking at, so it’s a future possibility that we can develop regulations specific to dental hygienists. However, there is another factor and that is there are no dental hygienists school in Canada at this point. So what we are hoping to do is work with perhaps not even other jurisdictions, but right into other countries. We are thinking about working with Alaska on that.

So...

The dental services in itself for a Treaty Dene is not covered. It’s not an insured service, so that is covered by Non-Insured Health Benefits from the federal government, although it’s in the contract with us and we provide the same service to the Metis, and we also provide the same service to people over 60, through extended health. So that is something that we are looking at working on better ways on how dental hygienists can work with the dentists.

Right now we have to be under the supervision of the dentist, but we are trying to work on that. There is as much indirect supervision as...

We did not receive anything like that from any dentist.

Thank you. That is the ultimate way to go. We recognize that the doctors will be living in the communities where they’re serving, so that continues to be our push. When I talked to all of the Joint Senior Management Committee a couple of weeks ago, I did talk only about trying to get doctors into a community. The new CEO that will be coming on is very versed in bringing in and talking to doctors and trying to hire doctors and so on. We also have a support system in Health and Social Services that will help the communities and CEOs recruit doctors for their communities. That continues to be the...

From our perspective, if the other dentists wish to practise in the NWT that would provide more services. We’re short dentists, as we hear in the Legislative Assembly frequently, so we would welcome other dentists to come in and practise.