Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to acknowledge the passing of Bishop John Sperry, a beloved Northerner, on Saturday. In my time in the travel industry, Bishop Sperry was the most dignified, considerate, compassionate client I ever dealt with. His character and personal qualities were ones we would all do well to emulate. The North is a poorer place today. My condolences to his family and all those who knew him.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This is a bit of a thorny subject and I’m very reluctant to bring it up, of course, but in previous governments – a couple of them, at least – the Premier has committed to table, post, make public all travels of Cabinet Ministers. I would like to ask our Premier, the Honourable Bob McLeod, today if he is going to commit to share that same information publicly.
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The honourable Premier, Mr. McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We have an open and transparent government and we’ll continue that practice.
I do appreciate that response. We’ll look forward to seeing those travel reports. For the record, I think that Members on this side of the House should be expected to do the same thing.
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. More of a comment. The honourable Member for Deh Cho, Mr. Nadli.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My question today is just a follow up from my statement regarding heart and stroke. My question is to the Minister of Health and Social Services. What methods do we use, especially in small communities, to detect and diagnose heart disease in children?
Thank you, Mr. Nadli. The honourable Minister responsible for Health and Social Services, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I believe that the method that is used is used by the doctors. I don’t actually know the exact terminology, but it goes to the regular process during the time when a child would be feeling ill. The doctors would go through a process that I’m not familiar with or not an expert to speak of at this time.
I’d like to thank the Minister for his response. My other question is: Is information regarding heart disease and heart conditions getting to school kids, and if so, how is that being done regarding the overall health of children and heart conditions?
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.
I’d like to thank the Minister again. Just in terms of my final question, how do we know that information programs, whether it’s Healthy Babies or initiatives to ensure that heart disease is detected, are effective since we know that the rate of obesity, for example, is rising?
At this time we recognize the fact that there is obesity, high obesity amongst children. The department is trying to work with the federal government on the childhood obesity issue right across the board by asking the health centres and anybody that is in the health field to work on proper eating, and not eating sugar, and exercising and so on. Essentially what we’re trying to do is approach this from a wellness and promotion area, hoping that these issues are picked up at this time. Some of them are difficult to pick up, but that is what we are hoping to do with the promotion and prevention programs.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The honourable Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are for the Minister of ITI and are with regard to the management of the Prelude Lake campground and boat launch. There’s a large and growing demand on these facilities and it’s probably the most popular park in the Northwest Territories. A large volume of parked campers, casual users of the boat launch, and those accessing both legal and illegal squats from the landing. Parking and dock use is maxed out and quality of experience is declining. In correspondence from the 16th Assembly’s Minister of ITI, the Minister said a new and comprehensive management plan for the park will be forthcoming this year. Can the Minister of ITI tell me the status of that work?
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The honourable Minister responsible for Industry, Tourism and Investment, Mr. David Ramsay.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It was my understanding that this comprehensive management plan was started and I would be more than happy to advise the Member of the status of that plan as soon as I find out.
I look forward to that update. I guess really we want to be staying on top of our facilities such as this in a timely way and before they disintegrate to this degree, making the corrections that are necessary. What are the mechanisms that we have to regularly monitor the health of our facilities such as the Prelude Lake boat launch and so on, and for taking action to get those repaired in a timely way?
I take very seriously the concerns related to parks and tourism. I spent a number of years as a parks officer in the North Slave region. I’m well aware of the condition and deteriorating conditions in some of our parks and the fact that when it comes to maintenance dollars and capital dollars, parks, because of the competing interests for those capital dollars, are usually one of the last things that gets put on the table. I think we really need to do parks a service and try to identify capital dollars in a meaningful way going forward that are going to have an impact on our parks and the condition of our parks, because we are out there in a large way promoting this territory to tourists around not only North America but globally, getting them here. It’s important that when tourists do show up in the Northwest Territories that our parks are in shape, that they’ll enjoy their stay and that our residents will also enjoy our park system the way it is.
Thanks for the response from the Minister. As the Minister noted, in my previous question, there’s a wide range of consultation going on with territorial and federal departments with regard to Prelude Lake, but there was no mention from the previous Minister how First Nations governments’ involvement will be ensured, and the public and stakeholder consultations. The boat launch itself is a jumping off point to the use of Akaitcho lands. Can the Minister assure me that the Yellowknives Dene First Nation will be included early in the work and the public will be informed and involved throughout?
I gave the Member a commitment to get him an update on the status of the plan for Prelude Lake and I’d be more than happy to get the Member a status of the involvement of the Yellowknives Dene in those discussions.
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Final supplementary, Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate the Minister’s commitment there. Another big component of the high demand for a boat launch and parking facilities is the high number of illegal occupations on federal lands, squatters that use the boat launch and so on. I’ve received an assurance from the Minister of MACA that there will be a call for aggressive federal enforcement of land law. These squats debase our tourism product as well as for the local law-obeying citizens. I’d like to ask if the Minister will work with the MACA Minister to push for federal enforcement of its law.
Yes, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. The honourable Member for Inuvik Boot Lake, Mr. Moses.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My question today is for the Minister of Health and Social Services regarding his opening statement earlier today dealing with prevention and promotion. It’s a great subject and a great move forward for this government to be looking into prevention and promotion to get our people in the NWT healthy and living fulfilled lives. In his statement he mentions that communities are essential in making prevention work. He also says that prevention and promotion activities are essential if we want to improve the health status of our population. I believe currently the policy for the Health Promotion Fund, which this would probably filter through, only provides funding to one project per year per organization. In order to make this successful, I believe that this government needs to provide funding to similar projects on a concurrent basis. Is the Minister willing to look into the policy to change the policy so that groups who have successful projects can get funding in subsequent years rather than just having a one-time deal?
Thank you, Mr. Moses. The honourable Minister of Health and Social Services, Mr. Beaulieu.
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 dropped.
What we’re trying to do now is move more of that type of money into prevention. We had indicated in the House before that we were hoping to move about what the department is spending, about 1 percent of its budget, on prevention and promotion, to about 3 percent. Thank you.
As the Minister stated, there will be more funding going into health promotion and the policies and looking at the successful projects. But in the past, I believe the department has seen a lot of successful projects. However, funding couldn’t go back to them based on the policy that if an organization had a successful program one year or they got funding for one year, they wouldn’t be able to see funding for the same project the second year. My question was to the Minister, if he’d be willing to change the policy to multi-year funding rather than just the one-time deal for successful projects. Thank you.
The Department of Health and Social Services goes through the annual business planning process, like any other department, but we actually did discuss the ways where we can do this, where we can provide multi-year funding to organizations that are making progress in the area of prevention and promotion. Thank you.
Just one final question in regard to this new funding that might be going to the prevention area. Will there be a marketing strategy going out from the Department of Health and Social Services to all these communities and all these organizations to let them know that the new policy is going to possibly change, so that any organizations that had successful programs in the past and haven’t gone back to that pot because of the current policy, that they will be able to go back and get funding again for a successful project that they had in the past? What is the marketing strategy for this upcoming fiscal year? Thank you.
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.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final supplementary, Mr. Moses.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In regard to prevention, earlier to my Member’s statement I made a comment that the departments should work more collectively together. Has the Minister of Health worked with other areas such as the Department of Justice and how can they work together so that funding is not duplicated for some of these prevention programs? Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, an example of the departments working with other departments is like going into the schools and providing money to the schools and having something like Drop the Pop promotion in schools that we’re going to go into with. Like I indicated, they’ll be launching that in 40 schools this week and next week. Yes, our intention is to work on the prevention with the Department of MACA because of the youth and also in the schools, education. Yes, I think we’re also working on some other areas with the Department of Justice that may not be exactly with health promotion for children, but we’re working with them as well. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The honourable Member for Mackenzie Delta, Mr. Blake.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As the moratorium on evictions draws near, I’d like to ask the Minister of Housing what is the success rate for people in public housing with arrears to set up payment plans.
Thank you, Mr. Blake. The honourable Minister responsible for the NWT Housing Corporation, Mr. Robert McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Right now we’ve had nobody that is potentially affected by the evictions come forward and enter into repayment plans. We’ve got a month and a half left and we’re hoping that things improve in the meantime. Thank you.
My next question is: Will the Minister of Housing be willing to extend the deadline?
We have had this in place now for approximately four months. We feel that is adequate enough time for people to come in and enter into repayment plans and try to honour them. No, we won’t be looking at extending the deadline, because we feel the people have had enough time. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Hay River North, Mr. Bouchard.
