Tom Beaulieu

Like I indicated, the public health officer will work with the authorities, and recognizing that we will advise the communities on the risks of the disease and what type of factors that create an atmosphere in which this virus can spread. Overcrowding is one of the key situations due to the close contact from individual to individual when you have houses that are overcrowded. In some cases, a lot of washing and so on needs to occur and when you have water delivery in the small communities sometimes you don’t have access to as much water necessary to do all of the cleanliness necessary, like as...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The department’s environmental health officers are visiting communities that are at most risk and working with local staff from those communities on how to address the issue. We haven’t done work with the other departments specifically on this as we try to address the issue of overcrowding or trying to address the issue of municipal services, if that is a factor at this time. We have not done that work. We are doing our work with the local health authorities and local health centres to see if we can address that issue in that way. Thank you.

Mahsi cho, Mr. Speaker. [English translation not provided.]

I would like to pay tribute to the late Frederick Harold Lafferty of Fort Resolution. Frederick was born August 19, 1939, and passed away on July 3, 2012, at the age of 73. Frederick was a Metis man who lost his wife many years ago and lived his life for his grandchildren, children and great-grandchildren.

Frederick has spent the last few years in long-term care here at Stanton Hospital. Frederick was a family oriented man who devoted a great deal of his time to his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. He enjoyed nothing...

I guess, first off, a Caucus priority was to look at a treatment centre, looking at existing infrastructure. Where the actual treatment centre, if that is the direction that the various forums across the Territories come up with and that is the best direction they feel that it’s going to be to have a treatment centre located somewhere in the Northwest Territories in addition to Nats'ejee K'eh, then we will move in that direction.

Right now we’re serious. We’ve employed these 14 individuals who will go across the territory, and they will come to us with recommendations. If a recommendation is to...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Although it may appear that the drug issue is a huge issue in Yellowknife, we want to identify exactly how huge the issue is. One of the first things that we are doing is to put together groups of individuals that will be looking at the addictions across the territory, including Yellowknife. So we have a group of people that we’ve selected that will look at the addictions issues in Yellowknife. That’s the first step.

No, we have not taken this report out. We’re looking at some of the key recommendations in there. There were about four or five key recommendations in there that we are looking at closely before we take it out to the public. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In early 2012, Alberta Blue Cross completed an analysis and report on the NWT pharmaceutical strategy policy options for the Government of the Northwest Territories. This included a number of observations and recommendations to the government.

I don’t have the costs here. I’m sure that we would be able to determine the cost of what it would be when someone misses an appointment, but this is a missed appointment for an individual that doesn’t show up at the doctor’s office and a percentage of that time will come down to a cost. Sometimes they replace the patient with a waiting list, but what I can do is develop a cost for the percentage.

That percentage was a percentage that came from medical travel. It was all medical travel that includes the medical travel within the territory coming to Yellowknife, going to Inuvik, or also...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Medical travel is a clinical decision, first of all. Secondly, the policy is that medical travel, from the office here in Yellowknife, does contact the authority; the authority contacts the patient. The patient would then contact medical travel and make the arrangements for the travel and to make it to the appointment. It should generally be a fairly simple process. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, we can take a look at the patterns of where the infections are occurring and correlate them to whether or not they are caused by overcrowding.

Overcrowding is probably the number one factor to the spread of this infection. I can talk to not only the Minister of the Housing Corporation but also other Cabinet colleagues on this issue to try to address that as soon as possible. Thank you.