Wendy Bisaro

We’ve still got time?

Thank you, Madam Chair. I just have a few comments here in terms of the supp as a whole. It’s relatively minor in that there are only four items, I think, on here. Most of them are in and out, but we do have one very significant item and that is the request for the work to be done on the Inuvik-Tuk highway.

I’ll back up a bit. I was pleased, actually, to see that in this supplementary appropriation for capital, although its number three, it’s a relatively minor amount in terms of the number of projects that money is being asked for, a large amount, in my mind, in terms of $2.5 million for the...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I just had a question with regard to the last item, the funding required to address the increased costs of food. Like other Members, I’m having great difficulty understanding why we couldn’t have seen that we were going to need a higher budgeted amount for food costs at our corrections facilities across the territory. My understanding is that we have budgeted the same amount for corrections facilities for food for about the last three, four or five years. To the Minister, I’d like to know how often we adjust our base funding. I know sometimes it’s done every year, but...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m sorry; I’d like to go back to the first item, law enforcement. I did have a question with regard to the expenditure, the third expenditure for $206,000 to provide funding for our share of increased costs with regard to the new RCMP allowance policy, I guess, or backup policy.

I know that this policy has been in place for I think maybe two years now, perhaps a little longer, but I’d like to know whether or not this policy is going to have an impact on us in the future. We’ve got an expenditure here which is beyond our budgeted amount in this particular year. Is this...

Thanks to the Minister. So we are doing some stuff, it sounds like; communicating with nurses at health centres and clinics that are in our smaller and isolated communities.

I guess I would like to know from the Minister whether or not that means that we are actually doing diagnoses. Are we able to keep patients and residents in their community as opposed to having them travel to a regional centre?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to address a few more questions to the Minister of Health and Social Services about the Foundation for Change and our health reform and what we’re doing in that regard. In some of the Minister’s answers earlier he talked about in terms of health professionals, nurse practitioners and doctors, he talked about wishing to do things, but I realize that the department has a very long wish list. My particular question at this point to the Minister is: We may wish to do these things, but what are we doing about attracting health professionals to our territory? Thank...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I move that $2.5 million be deleted from the activity highways under the Department of Transportation, capital investment expenditures, not previously authorized, on page 7, for the provision of funding to undertake engineering and environmental assessment work for the Inuvik to Tuktoyaktuk highway project.

Thanks to the Minister. I have to disagree that we need to get rid of the PAs and establish boards. I am happy to hear the Minister say that we’re not going to wait until the boards are in place. I think the Yellowknife Stanton Territorial Health Authority has been without a board for 10 or 12 years. Goodness knows that we can’t wait for those boards to be in place. I think there’s a responsibility on the part of the government to put their foot down and say this is how we’re going to do things. Yes, there needs to be consultation, but when push comes to shove, it’s our responsibility to make...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. To the Minister of Transportation, why did we not hear anything about this extraordinary cost last fall? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to follow up on my Member’s statement. I have some questions for the Minister of Health and Social Services with regard to our health system reform. The Minister spoke yesterday about moving doctors around. From Hansard I have a sentence where he stated, “We are actually starting on the process now.” I feel that reworking how we use our doctors and changing our system of hiring doctors, and how we assign doctors to their jobs is something that we really need to do relative to getting reform done and I think the Minister agrees with me. I’d like to know where we...