Tom Beaulieu

Thank you. Nine of the nurse practitioners are funded through the THSSI, the Territorial Health Systems Sustainability Initiative. That’s federal funding. The rest of them are funded through O and M. So not through any other funding other than just regular O and M through the health and social services authorities. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I said I would ask the authorities to provide the Health and Social Services with a business case by the end of April. Just for lack of not having the information and feeling that there’s been plenty of time for the authorities to put that information together, I’m suggesting that that would be a good date for them to provide the business case to us. As soon as the business case is in our hands, then it would not take us long to maybe have one discussion with the Joint Leadership Council, and then over to the Financial Management Board to see if the funding for...

Mr. Speaker, we have not come up with a solution to provide flexible funding for Hay River. At this time, interestingly enough, we are waiting for a business case from the Hay River Health Authority senior management and two other health authorities that will give us the business case returned back to the Financial Management Board who restricts the funding for physicians. Once we are able to develop a business case for these authorities, then we will present that to the Financial Management Board to determine whether or not we will be allowed to build flexibility into physician funding to...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There is no plan to put a board back in place in Hay River immediately. We are looking at the legislation to see what type of management structures we would be allowed to have in the various authorities right across the territory, because right now the past board, as it stands, was a board for Hay River only.

When we build a new health centre and we were trying to bring some of the surrounding communities, as Mr. Bouchard indicated, they will provide service from that centre to some of the surrounding communities. For example, right now people drive from Fort Resolution...

Mr. Speaker, the plan is the fieldwork for the forum would be done by March 31st. Soon after that we are going to select a group of them and maybe even have other people involved to write the report. Yes, there would still be time for them to expand some of their fieldwork if necessary. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We would have no problem directing the forum to visit with the shelters or any facilities where there was an attraction of people that had addiction issues, recognize now that their plan was to have public meetings, and advertise and try to draw people to the meetings, recognizing that they could only draw the people that were interested in the topic. Sometimes they don’t have that interest in some communities, but we are finding that in the smaller communities they are getting a lot of interest. Thank you.

Yes, the department has had some conversations with some of the key communities in strategic areas of the highway system that may benefit from having a service such as an ambulance service. We are working with an interdepartmental group, along with MACA and the Department of Transportation, to try to get the people trained. We are also looking at including one of the people that are required for emergency measures that would work in the ambulance under the umbrella legislation that Health is now trying to bring to the House as a legislative proposal. Within there, we would have the emergency...

Thank you. The department works with the Department of Education in healthy foods in schools and so on, hoping that this type of thing will carry on from the schools to the home. We support the anti-smoking campaigns like Don’t Be a Butthead as an example. We’re also in a federal campaign called Healthy Weights, so we deal with that as well. So these are some of the areas that we see as preventative. But just the whole nature of chronic disease management would be based on prevention that we feel is the best bang for the buck. Thank you.

Thank you. I apologize, I thought I said six of the NPs were funded through THSSI, and it is six NPs funded through THSSI. The plan is to, of course, continue to negotiate with the federal government on sustaining that funding. If that funding is no longer available, if that funding has been eliminated, then the department would have no option other than to go through this process of going through the mains to be able to see if we can’t get funding to retain our nurse practitioners in the system. So at this time our hope is that that funding will continue. Thank you.

Thank you. I don’t know why it’s taking this long, but I do know that we have a governance system where the health and social services authorities operate with a board, independent board or through a public administrator. So we are trying to set up a system now where we’re changing the governance.

As we stand up in the House here as Health Ministers to answer questions, there’s something that’s a little bit out of our control and that is that the management of the authorities. So we ask the authorities, we’ll work with the authorities and try to get that information. I will put appropriate...