Tom Beaulieu

One of the political directions that I have given to the department is to look at a strategy to bring doctors into it. As part of that strategy, as I indicated, would be the expansion of the nurse practitioner duties and other health professionals. We are actually starting the process now to try to develop something, whether it is going to be a model that brings doctors into the communities or doctors into the North or switching or expanding some duties of other health professionals in order to accommodate this. We are actually starting on the process now. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. At this time there is a restriction on allocating doctor funding. It’s a restriction that’s placed by the Financial Management Board to ensure that we always have enough physician funding in the budget to hire doctors. We have a certain amount of doctors that we need to operate in the North, and that funding at this time is restricted into that budget. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. This is not a board reform. We’re talking about reforming governance essentially in the way that the authorities are governing their various authorities, the way we’re governing the hospitals and health centres and so on. Even though this is governance reform, there will still be a requirement for a lot of consultation and that’s what we’re proposing. We’re not proposing to do any board reform at this time, or there’s no plan to do any board reform in the future either, for that matter.

The concern with the mould remediation was raised because the mould was between the...

Initially, when we’re moving into more prevention, more promotion, our first step was to discuss this with the Joint Leadership Council, which are the chairs and the public administrators of the various health and social services boards across the territory. That is the first thing we’re doing. Secondly, we’re going out to the communities and talking not only to the public but also the leadership, to look at areas that they think would be the best for their communities. Thank you.

These clients are children that have needs that require highly specialized daily attention for assessment, treatment, education and support services. The individual children that are in southern placements are there because we don’t have that service available in the NWT. Although the Child and Family Services Committee does deal with children receiving services, and under the whole Foster Care Program or the Child Protection Program we have these children in there in southern treatment or southern placement – some of these children in there in southern placement – it’s not directly associated...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, the plan is to move more money into prevention. That is not to say that we want to increase the overall budget in there. Right now the Department of Health and Social Services is spending over $12 million in the area of wellness and also in that budget is where they have the community-based health promotion. What we’re trying to do is move any programs that look like they’re successful, we’re going to support, because we recognize that issue, too, that some of the programs have been funded one year and regardless of whether they’re successful or not, they’ve been...

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...