Tom Beaulieu

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is a health centre/long-term care combination building. It is a very elaborate building. I’m going to get Mr. Heath to explain some of the technical class, I guess, as the Member indicated, of the building, but first to let the Member know that this is a building that is 4,000 square metres, approximately 4,000 square metres. We recognize there is a lot of staff to be trained. We’re in the process of putting the detail together and the training of the staff. We will also be going forward to the Assembly for all of the O and M that’s required to operate that...

Yes, Mr. Chairman, I have witnesses.

Certainly the mandate of the department is to do the best possible job it can in introducing infrastructure into the community. The new health centre in Fort Providence is on schedule. We’re proceeding with that piece of infrastructure. The timelines that we are looking at prior to moving to a public administrator is the same timeline that we are looking at now, so there will be no change in that. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We certainly had some discussions on the timeline on when we will go back to having a board of management. We need to do some consultation. There is some feeling by some Members in the Legislative Assembly that perhaps we could have some form of advisory board, but the plan is to have a board back in place within two years.

I’ve had this discussion with the newly appointed public administrator and he recognizes that his role there is to assist us in eventually bringing a board back in place for the Deh Cho Health and Social Services. Thank you.

The Department of Health and Social Services is working with the Government of Nunavut and the Government of Yukon developing a pan-territorial oral health strategy. We are doing the oral health strategy because of obvious reasons of health and all kinds of positive impacts. Within that health strategy, we are going to do an oral health promotion and prevention. We have listed many programs that we are looking at and together we’re hoping that, as indicated in the report, the only jurisdiction that had worse results than the Northwest Territories dental-wise was Nunavut, and we are working...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As Mr. Menicoche indicated in his Member’s statement, dental services are not an insured service by the Government of the Northwest Territories. However, we do work with the dentists, and the dentists go into the communities.

What happens is, during the year the dentists have a program where they’ll contract with the various authorities, and based on those contracts, they contract a certain amount of days that they are to be in each community, and then they are paid according to the amount of days they would spend in the communities. Then they do what they can in the...

Mr. Speaker, we are hoping to have one meeting soon. Aside from community meetings, we're hoping to get the MLA from Deh Cho and also the MLAs from Hay River as it could involve the new health centre in Hay River to provide services on the reserve, and also the two public administrators from Hay River and Deh Cho along with the chiefs from Deh Cho to sit down and make sure we are moving in the right direction and that people are happy with the direction that we are going in. Any medical services, as an example, the Member indicated that people in Fort Providence may find it easy to draw their...

Mr. Speaker, one of the reasons we appointed a public administrator is that there are certainly some significant concerns with health and social services in the Deh Cho. We are hoping that we are correcting some of those concerns in Health and Social Services and also that the public administrator, along with our senior management, recognizes the need to consult throughout the whole process. I have agreed to do a full consultation with not only Members of the Legislative Assembly but the leaders within the various communities in the Deh Cho along with the public administrator. Thank you.

Yes, I agree that some more visits by dental staff will be a good part of the oral health strategy. However, I think filling all of the dental therapist positions is also another strategy that we need to employ, and we’ll certainly look at the possibility of increasing visits as we did in other communities that requested that there be more visits. We will again talk to the dental people, within the bounds of our contract with them, to see what is possible.

I think that some of the acts of the dentist have to be revamped. Some of the acts are very old, so we are looking at revamping the Dental Profession Act at this time. Although the dental services remains a non-insured service, the department does get support from the federal government through the THSSI funding, or the Territorial Health System Sustainability Initiative. They provide us about a quarter of a million dollars in this area to pay for the dentists to go in there.

The specific details of why it was not included in a complete transfer in 1988, I don’t have that specific detail here...