Tom Beaulieu

We are just starting to put the pieces of this review together now. The position will come on, hopefully, soon in the new fiscal year. We believe that it will take all of the 12 months in that fiscal year to complete this review.

Yes, Madam Chair. To my right is Debbie DeLancey, deputy minister of Health and Social Services. To my left is Jeannie Mathison, director of finance, Health and Social Services.

We will definitely be evaluating the systems that we employ. We think that an essential part of introducing new systems. We don’t have estimates but we are trying to move forward on these things. Some of our activities we’re trying to move forward on. We’re told to stop evaluating and move forward. If we don’t evaluate and move forward, we’re told we’re not evaluating. So here are some of the decisions that we’re making. We’re moving forward on this because we think that the system, without a thorough analysis on whether or not this system is going to save money and exactly how much money it’s...

My understanding is there is no cap in as far as time, but the flow of the funding within that agreement is contingent upon approvals in the Assembly.

Yes, we will continue to employ common sense. The medical travel, we must remember that many individuals who have their opinion on medical travel is based on what they have gone through themselves. There are many, many, many scenarios with medical travel. We have to look at all of them. We also have to take into account the delivery of the program, the politics of it, the regulations. All of those aspects are things that we’re looking at to try and make it more efficient, and to develop a policy that does have common sense and is responsible through the government.

Just off the top of my head, a lot of the prevention work will reduce medical travel. Electronic medical records will reduce medical travel. E-health also will reduce medical travel. The TSN, I think we have a different name for that now, Territorial Support Network, where there’s a doctor on call who is able to assist people in remote communities through the telehealth system. Those items are intended to reduce the cost of medical travel. Otherwise we’re back to, without THSSI funding, the increase in the Canada Health Transfer will probably end up filling the gaps in 2014-2015.

Along those lines, we have recently hired an official languages manager. That was with the intention of updating our services on the official languages. We are also running a medical terminology specific to cancer, in Fort Good Hope as a pilot. Once the workshop is able to come back to us with terminology that we should be using to describe some of the things related to cancer, we will see the success of that type of workshop and then expand on that.

As a Minister of Health, I’m trying to develop things today that will have a savings in the future. I recognize that the Minister of Finance has done the tour on the ways that they can put the savings into the budget and, as the Member indicates, a lot of them are related to Health as a department, and consulting with my senior managers and finding out how do we think that we can meet some of the objectives of the people in the Territories and that’s what we’re doing. We’re putting together things that we think are huge cost drivers in the system and we’re trying to curb that now so that they...

Thank you. We’re expecting the health centre to be open early in the new fiscal year, early.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Right now some of the positions at health centres and hospitals have built into their jobs that they would be able to do interpreting or translating. I’m not sure what the correct term is. I don’t have the information here. I would rather say to fully draw out what we plan on doing for translation or interpretive services at the hospitals.