Tom Beaulieu

Like I indicated, running through the local health authorities across the North – and we have all the communities in one of the health authorities across the North – and right now the Diabetes Pilot Program and management of chronic diseases, the outcome to hopefully have better long-term results in diabetes prevention is being piloted in Norman Wells, Yellowknife and Behchoko.

I’m hoping that the evaluation that the department would do, working with the John Howard Society, looks at continuing the things that the shelter was put there for, with access to washrooms, telephone, Internet and so on, and also some counselling to the individuals who are accessing the shelter, to try and improve their lives.

Yes, that is the intention. The City of Yellowknife has put their money forward to extend the shelter. Health and Social Services has done a review of the service that has been provided, and once that review is done, the intention is to follow the City of Yellowknife and extend the money through 2012-2013.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to recognize the Grade 5 class of Sissons, and Monique as well. I often go and visit with the students over there.

The department is looking at essentially a repackaging of what’s happening in the communities. We would see our budgets… You know we cannot increase the budget by ourselves. I mean, it takes the whole House to do that, but we can start to move the funding around internally, and what we’re thinking about doing at this time is repackaging the money that’s going into prevention that’s kind of scattered all over the department, repackage, focus in on community delivery by helping assist the community organizations to deliver the prevention programs. Thank you.

The intention, again, is to use the pilot programs to try to improve the programs, management of chronic diseases. Once we have the report or results of the piloting in those few communities, our intention is to expand it into all of the communities. Once we get the results of the pilot program we will share it with the House.

The Department of Health recognizes that there are a couple of facilities in the Beaufort-Delta that were previously used for treatment facilities and we are prepared to look at the feasibility of using those for treatment centres as we go through our inventory of existing infrastructure. Thank you.

There is a way and we are working with the various health authorities across the Territories. We’re going to work with the boards, the public administrators, the CEOs of all of the health and social services across the territory to get that message out. To get the message out that says these are some of the causes of the sicknesses that are occurring across the territory. That’s why when we say we’re moving into prevention, with prevention is promotion and communication with people in the Northwest Territories.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The cancer rates across the Territories of the various cancers, like colorectal cancer is at 24 percent, breast cancer is at 17 percent, prostate is at 14 percent and lung cancer is at 10 percent. Some of those cancers obviously are tied to lifestyle; some are tied to other factors. It could be water, as Mr. Yakeleya indicated. The intention is that when we do put a report out, it will cover all of the cancers across the territory and if smoking is a big factor in the cancer rates across the Territories, then, yes, it will be indicated in the report.

The cancer rates across the Northwest Territories have gone up. Between 1992 and 2009, cancer rates are 162 cases per 100,000 to an increase of 283 cases per 100,000. In Fort Good Hope it is a bit higher but it is not significantly higher than that particular NWT number. It’s 331 cases per 100,000. That doesn’t mean we don’t want to focus on the issue. As the Minister, I would be prepared to discuss some sort of strategy to address the issue of all of the people in the Northwest Territories that have loss through cancer and try to address that issue in a more across-the-board way.