Tom Beaulieu

Thank you, Madam Chair. The department has had discussions with the Deh Cho Health and Social Services and also the Hay River Health and Social Services on a way to open up the health centre. We are looking at providing the health services from the Hay River Health and Social Services in that office and trying to determine what the level of needs would be for clinical needs on the reserve. So whether or not there would be, as you know, we only have one doctor in the Hay River Health and Social Services Authority. So we would be using locums and nurse practitioners to assist in the operation of...

Mahsi cho, Mr. Speaker. I give notice that on Monday, June 3, 2013, I will move that Bill 21, An Act to Amend the Dental Profession Act, be read for the first time. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The process of appointing a new board is going to start immediately. We are looking at the governance. In 2011 we had a report done by a consultant. The conclusion was that the system, as it is, is not sustainable. We are working with a Joint Leadership Council that includes all the chairs and all the boards looking at a sustainable government system first. Once we have a good system that we think that we are comfortable with right across the Territories, we are going to put the board in place. We also recognize that we were waiting for the CEO to come in. That has happened, so we can start...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I guess aside from having some contact with the MLAs from the Beaufort-Delta, we have not discussed reappointment of a health board with the Aboriginal governments or the other municipal governments in the Beaufort-Delta. We have continued to work with the public administrator in the Beaufort-Delta.

Yes, I think there is a way that we can improve the communication and I will have that discussion with the executive, and they will, in turn, have a discussion with the people that are responsible for making sure that the lines are open when people want to get a hold of information.

The reason that the applications are often returned is an issue of ensuring that people are eligible for health care cards when they apply for it. There is information that is needed on the health care card that guarantees that those individuals are eligible, and we are trying to comply to previous issues where...

Perhaps I wasn’t clear. There are 11,600 until birthdates, until the 16th of May of this month, and at that point we had processed approximately 86 percent of those. But right up until the end of 2013 we will have about 38,000 people right from January too. So another 26,000 and some-odd cards, people whose cards will expire from May until December. Then the rest of the people, the 3,000 or so residents of the NWT, their cards will be expiring in 2014.

The anticipation is that things would go smooth and that an individual that gets a postcard 45 days before their birthday will then have, essentially, some time – I believe it’s four months even after their birthday – to apply. But their coverage is intended to continue as long as they have actually applied, whether they have the card or not.

That is just something that we’re doing now, because, of course, ideally, people would apply for their cards, go through the regular system, the card would come on time and they would be covered. That was the planning that took place. That was the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The department is working with all of the health authorities and also the health centres right across the territory to try to make this renewal of health cards as smooth as possible.

As of the middle of this month, we were to process 11,600 health care cards starting in January 2013. We have about an 86 percent compliance. We have about 86 percent of those processed, so there are a lot of health cards being done. Overall, we need to process about 38,000 health care cards in 2013.

For the most part we think it’s going fairly smoothly. We do have some glitches in the...

I don’t have that information with me. The last information I have is there was some issue about the land tenure. The Hay River Reserve, the majority of the land is federal land, if not all. So we’re just sorting out the land tenure and I believe that that has been sorted out. So I could maybe commit to trying to get the centre opened this summer.

Thank you, Madam Chair. The Health Information Act is currently being drafted and the bill will be introduced in this fall session of the 17th Assembly.