Tom Beaulieu

Madam Chair, we had hoped to visit all of the communities in our initial meetings at the community. When we go into a community, we meet with the community leaders, the organizations and the Aboriginal organizations, and we also have a public meeting. We’re hoping that we’ll conclude all of the meetings, which I am actually doing myself. So we’re hoping that, weather permitting and everything else, we will complete our community meetings and I guess what we are referring to as a consultation in the community by the end of this summer.

The department supports some of the Healthy Family programs. We have some Healthy Family programs in the North and also there’s Healthy Babies. During the prenatal stages there is support given to the mothers to see if there could be any issues prior to birth. One of the key areas is that when the babies are just born and until they start school, they have a program, Healthy Babies, and if there’s any issue, it’s hoped it would be caught at that point.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There are basically two solutions, two long-term solutions that would address this issue. The first is amending the authority funding to address the structural deficits. This being addressing this with what is happening. Like I indicated previously to some questions was that we have to move some of the costs right now. The budget for some of the costs like a lot of the medical travel and doctors’ services to the Stanton in order to cover it. Right now the health and social services authorities that have the budget do end up sending their individual clients to Stanton...

Mr. Speaker, this Assembly has talked about the importance of supporting residents to be healthy, educated and free from poverty. I think most people in our territory will agree.

We need to help our children, families and communities get to a place where they feel good, can meet their own needs and contribute in a positive way to our society.

We’ve talked about the need to use prevention, education and awareness in making this happen. Today I will speak about the approach we want to take through the health and social services system to reach this goal.

Prevention is basically about making...

Thank you, Madam Chair. The Member is talking about the need to reform the governance. Without reforming our governance and operating great parts of health and social services as one system could go a long way to resolving the solution. We have looked at our audit and in the Auditor General’s report they talk about a lot of the cost pressures and how the various authorities do the same programs, the same programs that we deliver to those in a different way. There is savings to be had in the area of putting one system together under procurement. Also in the various aspects of finance where a...

Yes, I can provide that information to the Member and the House.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The positions of nurse practitioners are needed in the regional centres where they’re able to perform their full nurse practitioner jobs. Nurse practitioners are brought in and educated to become nurse practitioners so that they can be out in the field and providing much needed relief like physician-type of work. The nurse practitioners, when they end up wishing to remain in Yellowknife, do end up as registered nurses on many occasions because they have doctors in Yellowknife. I think seven of our nine nurse practitioners are located here in Yellowknife.

The department will actually be working on a business case for reallocation in that funding, and also the expansion of other health professionals, and particularly the nurse practitioner duties, in order to try to accommodate the lack of doctors in the various communities. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. On August 15th of last year the operating room where there was an issue was resumed to capacity. However, the aging equipment continues to present challenges to maintain consistent pH levels and the optimum sterilization results. So we’re not anticipating that there will be further issues, but given the age of the hospital and the operating room itself, it is possible. At this time, like I said, we’re operating at full capacity and it should be okay. I can’t make a prediction on that, Madam Chair.

Mr. Speaker, an example of the departments working with other departments is like going into the schools and providing money to the schools and having something like Drop the Pop promotion in schools that we’re going to go into with. Like I indicated, they’ll be launching that in 40 schools this week and next week. Yes, our intention is to work on the prevention with the Department of MACA because of the youth and also in the schools, education. Yes, I think we’re also working on some other areas with the Department of Justice that may not be exactly with health promotion for children, but we...