Kate Reid

I'm all right for now, thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Can the Minister speak to whether his Cabinet will be using the Arctic and Northern Policy Framework again in this Assembly? Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. And I'd be happy to talk to the Minister more fulsomely about this with suggestions. I hope he comes to committee and chats with us about it. But I really, really, really stress that, you know, in the scoping of how you want to go out on an RFP for this that you really take a really careful look at that report, talk to your communicators, find out what's working first before you spend a whole heck ton of money and time on something that will probably give you the same results. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and thank you to the Minister. That's really great to hear. And to, you know, echo my colleague from Monfwi's statement earlier today, it's really good to hear that this Minister's supporting things over time and getting us there, and I hope she can get us there as quickly as possible. So to that end, is the Minister's department willing to invest further in training local NWT health care workers to increase their skill sets? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Wow, okay. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my questions today are also for the Minister of Health and Social Services. Could the Minister please confirm if the majority of need for agency nurses is in obstetrics? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I wish to table a letter from the Union of Northern Workers to Members of the 20th Legislative Assembly on the Use of Agency Nurses in NWT Healthcare. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And I will do my best to not break your rules today, but I'm going to go back to what I was asking the Minister of Health and Social Services yesterday.

My first question is whether or not the Department of Health and Social Services has asked Indigenous midwives about what would support the growth of midwifery in the territory, specifically in our smaller communities? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Could the Minister speak to whether he'd consider expanding or reenvisioning the NWT alert page to draw from GNWT corporate communications or any centralized mechanism that would be able to consolidate all relevant and robust public safety information in a mobile app, like the BC wildfire app. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I'd like to talk about how we communicate. I'm going to talk specifics. The Northwest Territories emergency plan from April 2024 has an appendix B, which is the emergency communications protocol. One sentence on page 6 of the protocol reads: Within this model, departments and agencies are expected to implement their own communications tactics based on their own business continuity needs during an emergency.

Mr. Speaker, I'm hearing general concern that this will give GNWT departments the leniency to silo themselves in future disasters down the line. It's also a...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And thank you to the Minister. I realize these are last minute questions, and I appreciate that. I hope she can get back to me on maybe some of the history of what the department has done to talk to Indigenous midwives.

My next question is why have midwives not been considered in the recruitment and retention strategies that have been applied to nurses and physicians? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.