Tom Beaulieu

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...

As we take a look at the delivery model again, many of the functions that are in the authority like the public health, Healthy Families and public health nurse and so on are targeted towards early childhood development and are part of their functions. A part of many of the positions in the authority are addressing the early childhood development. We will make sure that any information that we get as a result of having Dr. Corriveau back in our employment will be given to the health and social services authorities.

Yes, Mr. Chairman. To my right I have the deputy minister, Debbie DeLancey, Health and Social Services. To my left I have the assistant deputy minister, Mr. Derek Elkin, Health and Social Services.

Mr. Chair, in the department we have one position, but most of the money to do early childhood development work is with the authorities, with the health and social services authorities across the North. I don’t have the detail of how many positions that constitutes.

Mr. Chair, as we travel to the communities, many of the Aboriginal communities that we had gone to have indicated to myself and the staff that was travelling with me when they wanted to take a look at treatment. As an example, that we should be working with the communities to develop a model which meant that if there were families that needed treatment, if there was youth that needed treatment, that they would be going out on the land with the elders and that they would be essentially living out there on the land for a period of time while they address their addiction issues. We had indicated...

The NWT Diabetes Clinic was open here in Yellowknife. We’re reviewing the reason why the Diabetes Clinic is not open right now. There is a call across the Territories to have the Diabetes Clinic reopened in Yellowknife. Also in the new health centre in the Sahtu there is a plan to have a diabetes program in there.

I’m prepared to do that after the federal budget is approved.