Tom Beaulieu

Yes, we recognize the benefits.

Yes, I do, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Chair, the Fort Providence Health Centre was built in 1970. The life expectancy is now up with that facility. There is a plan to replace that facility. We are planning on completing the study. Sorry; the study has been completed. The project is approved. It is in design this year. We are expecting to have it completed by 2015.

The Stanton Territorial Hospital is a territorial asset and as all residents of the Northwest Territories will have equal access to Stanton Territorial Hospital, that process may be that way, and that is the plan. But at the same time, I must say that our intention is to bring our plan, our governance plan back to the Standing Committee on Social Programs before decisions are made. We also have ongoing discussions with the Joint Leadership Council before we make decisions.

I think this is the final step of the planning, the program planning. I think the next step is to put money into the capital plan. This is the process for all the infrastructure that’s needed. It goes through a process when we first come up with the idea. I don’t think that the department or the government wants to see us spend $1.2 million on program planning, technical status evaluations, schematic planning, planning contingencies, and then put another $4 million in this year to complete the remaining schematic planning and occupancy planning if there isn’t an intention to seriously look at...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is going to be part of our review of modernizing the integrated service delivery model.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. All the nurse practitioner positions are within the authorities but we don’t have the information here on the amount of nurse practitioners who have graduated recently.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In some locations across the North, we recognize that we spoke briefly on the long-term care facilities and our inability to put long-term care facilities in every community. In many of the smaller communities they were asking for much simpler, cheaper response, or less expensive response than that, and that was to increase home care workers.

So we’re looking at the integrated service delivery model. It’s 10 years old, I believe, and we want to review that and we want to be able to respond to those types of requests where they’re saying we’re not expecting you to build...

Yes, it’s staffed.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The shortage of doctors at the regional level is an issue, there’s no question about it. We have had a meeting with the Joint Leadership Council. The Joint Leadership Council is the chairpersons and the public administrators of all of the health authorities, health and social services authorities. We have asked them to develop a plan, a recruitment plan for physicians, by September of this year. I’m meeting with the Joint Leadership Council again on June 15th of this year to get a bit of an update on how things are moving in that area, and we’re hoping that we’re able...