Tom Beaulieu

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We’ve always known that there is a staff shortage of nurses right across the Territories. We also know that we have a separate governance system in every health and social services authority across the territory. We can’t share resources as though we have one single governing system with doctors or nurses the same. So the health authorities with their own governance system get the nurses in, they hire the nurses or they hire locums to fill in these positions. So in reality, the department is not specifically aware where and when the nurses are not going to be, although...

Mr. Speaker, that seemed to be the problem, that they had moved away from purely alcohol counselling to more of counsellors that have degrees in mental health and that they looked at a lot of this as mental health issues. It appears as though the communities that want to use Nats’ejee K’eh would like to see that become more of an alcohol counselling type of facility as opposed to a lot of the mental health counselling requirements that are now associated at Nats’ejee K’eh. That’s the exact review that we had asked the board to come back with, an alcohol type counselling versus something that...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We recognize that Nats’ejee K’eh is not operating at full capacity. There is no question about that. Also, the people do successfully complete Nats’ejee K’eh. We don’t have an instrument that’s going to determine whether or not the Nats’ejee K’eh graduates were fully successful in achieving their battle against addictions, because at which point do we measure success? Is it one year of sobriety? Five years? Or is it a lifetime of sobriety after that? We are trying to get a feel from the communities and the people that have gone through Nats’ejee K’eh, through the...

Mr. Speaker, the plan is not to move people that are from Hay River that require long-term care into long-term care beds outside of Hay River. All the long-term care needs in Hay River will be addressed within Hay River. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The very first process to adding long-term care beds to Hay River would be to go through the capital planning process. I’ve had discussions with the executive and the Department of Health and Social Services about initiating the initial discussions that are needed at the senior bureaucratic level to talk about adding this project to the capital plan for the GNWT. Thank you.

It would be difficult to stand up in the Legislative Assembly and ask for some political support on this, but we can, hopefully, based on the merit of the assessment in the community for the need of long-term care beds in Hay River. It would be based on that that we would extend the use of that facility.

If we were to request that the Department of Public Works and Services reviewed the building for use as a long-term care facility, Health and Social Services would pay for the review.

Thank you. The department and I are certainly aware that these are issues. Again, the current governance system allows each of the health authorities to employ nurses right across their own authorities. So each of the authorities would have a geographical area and they would employ the nurses to the locations. They’re independent from other authorities, and also independent from Stanton Hospital and independent from the Department of Health and Social Services. That is an issue; we see that as an issue. So recognizing that we’re doing something about the governance issue starting with the...

Thank you. Other than providing information to all of the community groups in the various communities where the health centres would close, with the exception of essential services, I don’t know if the Beaufort-Delta Health and Social Services Authority actually had an action plan in place that would say that this is what we were going to do in case of emergency. I suppose that they would treat it like any other medical emergency. If there was a medical emergency at any time while there was staff at the health centre or not, they would be treated in the same type of urgency. Thank you.

We are looking to try to develop something at Nats’ejee K’eh. As I indicated, perhaps some treatment programs that would be built in in the summertime for youth.

Right now all of our youth that end up in treatment end up in treatment in southern placements. I think that the numbers of youth going to treatment, that type of treatment where they are placed in a southern treatment facility is very low. I think I at one time used the number five youth had gone to treatment over a two-year period from the Northwest Territories. So it’s difficult to build a program around that type of number, but we...