Tom Beaulieu

From about 1995 to 2009, smoking for people over the age of 15 has gone down from about 52 percent to 38 percent, and that’s largely to do with the Don’t Be a Butthead campaign that was launched in the schools and so on.

The department is trying to come up now with an overall strategy of health problem prevention, and how we’re hoping to do that is to talk to our authorities, and the communities, and the professionals in the communities and try to package, along with the Aboriginal government, try to package the programs that are in the community so that we have a greater impact, that good...

Yes, the rates of tuberculosis in the Northwest Territories are six times the national average. That’s a fact, but the numbers are still small. There are 26 cases per 100,000 people. This is the number and it’s less than four cases per 100,000 across the country. In cases where there was a bit of an outbreak of tuberculosis, the department has gone into the community; we’ve gone into the community, we’ve done screening. The last time that occurred we screened 95 percent of the community. We found 17 cases of positive tuberculosis and all of those cases have been eradicated.

The situation is that the community health nurses in communities where tuberculosis has come into the community or the community has come into contact with tuberculosis, the health nurses are working with the communities where there is overcrowding that seems to be one of the factors. We work with the local housing organizations to ensure that if there’s overcrowding in public housing, that we try to address that issue. If there’s overcrowding in the homeownership situation, then we work with the Housing Corporation to try to address that issue.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The department is working on the eradication of tuberculosis. The department works with Aboriginal community governments and our health authorities across the Northwest Territories to make a commitment to eliminate tuberculosis in the Northwest Territories.

The Department of Health and Social Services funds the health and social services authorities across the North and they deliver the chronic diseases programing, including diabetes. Right now the department is piloting a Chronic Disease Prevention and Management Program in a few of the communities across the North with the intention of improving the situation for people with chronic diseases.

The intent of the shelter was to provide a warm place for people to go have coffee, socialize and so on. There is also the availability in there of some counselling pertaining to possible housing, employment and so on. The John Howard Society is actually the organization that works with the people in the day shelter in order to provide that service.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Department of Health and Social Services has done an evaluation on the day shelter and at this time is reviewing the possibility of extending the funding through 2012-2013. The City of Yellowknife has also committed to extending their funding. Unfortunately the third funder on the project, BHP, will not be extending funding for this particular project but spending it elsewhere.

Mahsi cho, Mr. Speaker. Today I would like to speak about the state of the health and social service system in the Northwest Territories. We need to take decisive action to ensure that we can continue to deliver high-quality services to our residents into the future.

Sustainability of the health care system is a national issue and one that is of concern to Canadians across the country. Every health system in Canada is affected by rising costs, shortages of health professionals and the health needs of an aging population.

But in the North we face additional challenges, including the heavy use of...

This will be part of the repackaging of the way we are doing business. Communities that have success in programs and then have the program cut off after one year is not something that we want to continue. If communities have success with good programs in the schools or in the communities that are helping with prevention and are doing good upstream work for the Department of Health and for the people in the North, we are going to continue to fund those. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’ve had discussions with the department at the deputy minister level, and I’ve talked to the CEOs of the health authorities in one short lunch meeting and have advised them that this is the direction that I’m hoping to take the department more into prevention. Thank you.