Tom Beaulieu

I can’t see it being too difficult. We can provide a briefing note to the Member.

At this point we are thinking of approaching the midwives that are in Fort Smith to talk to us about how the program functions in Fort Smith. Right now the midwives have been doing deliveries in Fort Smith for the last several years, I think since 2005 when those regulations were developed for the community of Fort Smith. Now that they have doctors in Fort Smith, how that will change and how the system will work with doctors and how the system would work without doctors. The role of the midwives would be to give us the on-the-ground information on what works and what does not work. We’re...

Madam Chair, we can provide a general response. I will have the deputy minister do that.

Thank you, Madam Chair. We have not received a request from the Beaufort-Delta Health and Social Services Authority to provide this material. What we would be prepared to do is we could check with the authority, and then we will get a determination from them if they’re going to make a request for that. Then we will take it from there.

I recognize that we do have several reports. What I also recognize is, up until 16 months ago when I became Minister of Health and Social Services, there seemed to be a lot of issues surrounding a lack of treatment to the individuals suffering from addictions. So this forum was struck so we could go out and hear from the people firsthand. I’m not sure that those reports had full across-the-board community consultation like we’re doing with the Ministers’ Forum. We do try to fit what we have into the system, but so far we are hearing some preliminary things from the forum that we haven’t...

We have hired a doctor to do the review of the Integrated Service Delivery Model and we’re expecting the results of his work to be completed in August.

The risk that I am referring to, the management risk that I am referring to was the involvement of physicians. We have a Midwifery Program in place that, as I indicated, would involve physicians as well. Some of the risks associated with childbirth are considered to be risky, so we just wanted to ensure that we had the support of the physicians in order to manage the risk surrounding childbirth. That’s what I was referring to when I said we were trying to manage the risks by engaging the physicians.

Madam Chair, through the regular time it takes to cycle through receivables and payables, that’s the only thing we wouldn’t consider a delay or a gap. It is just a normal time to do business.

Just to make it simple, I think one of the key things is developing midwifery regulations. The thing with it is to ensure that the model would work effectively and would be beneficial to the region. Once the health centre is built, Hay River is going to be like a small regional operation as opposed to just a community operation like it is in Fort Smith. That is why we are rolling it out in that fashion. The next step after that would be a larger regional operation, or people grabbing midwife services in Inuvik would be coming from further away, so the visits are different and the care is...

Thank you, Madam Chair. The whole issue of midwifery, if we put midwives on the ground, we will do it without working with physicians and doctors that are in place now. We will do it without community consultation. We will do it without educational standards for midwives. We will do it without having territorial standards for midwives. These are the things that we want to put in place before we proceed.

We’re going to get the money on April 1st. We think that, as people working in the system, developing standards in education, setting up other standards territorial-wide, and working with the...