Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I indicated in the House before, Hay River is having difficulties getting permanent doctors. Speaking with the health board there, they’ve indicated there is also a barrier to funding. The fact is that there is a budget for doctors, but it doesn’t allow them to hire additional nurse practitioners and additional professionals in the community because the dollars are allocated for doctors. My question today is for the Minister of Health. Why is this barrier in place? I guess that is the first question. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. The honourable Minister of Health and Social Services, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. At this time there is a restriction on allocating doctor funding. It’s a restriction that’s placed by the Financial Management Board to ensure that we always have enough physician funding in the budget to hire doctors. We have a certain amount of doctors that we need to operate in the North, and that funding at this time is restricted into that budget. Thank you.
In light of Hay River’s situation currently, is there a way that the Minister can implement a temporary moratorium of sorts to allow Hay River the flexibility to hire those additional professionals while we don’t have permanent doctors so that we can have consistent professionals in the community of Hay River?
The department will actually be working on a business case for reallocation in that funding, and also the expansion of other health professionals, and particularly the nurse practitioner duties, in order to try to accommodate the lack of doctors in the various communities. Thank you.
My next question is: What is the timeline that the Minister would expect that we’d be able to implement this type of funding to allow nurse practitioners and, hopefully, a Midwifery Program into the Hay River Health Centre. What kind of timeline?
One of the political directions that I have given to the department is to look at a strategy to bring doctors into it. As part of that strategy, as I indicated, would be the expansion of the nurse practitioner duties and other health professionals. We are actually starting the process now to try to develop something, whether it is going to be a model that brings doctors into the communities or doctors into the North or switching or expanding some duties of other health professionals in order to accommodate this. We are actually starting on the process now. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Bouchard.
Yes, we look forward to that sooner than later, Mr. Speaker. I have no further questions. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. The honourable Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are addressed to the Minister of Human Resources. I would like to ask him a few questions to follow up on my statement. I talked a lot about public service, and lack of customer service and lack of service to our residents. I would like to ask the Minister initially whether or not we have a definition of customer services, whether his department has a definition of customer service, or are there standards that the department has that we use when we define customer service. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The honourable Minister of Human Resources, Mr. Abernethy.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In the past there have been training courses available through the NWT for customer service. I don’t believe those or any courses are currently being offered. As such, I am not sure if we have a true definition of customer service, but I am certainly willing to look into it and get a comprehensive answer whenever I can, at my earliest convenience. Thank you.
Thanks to the Minister. I guess my question went a bit more to the larger definition of service. I am thinking of service to our residents. I appreciate that customer service courses are sometimes offered. I think they have to be offered an awful lot more than they are. To the Minister in the issue of service to our residents in a larger sense, could he tell me whether or not we have standards which indicate, which define the kind of service, the level of service that we should be providing to our residents through our programs? Thank you.
I am not aware of a global statement that we have with respect to customer service. I believe a lot of the departments, with respect to their actual program areas, have identified a level of customer service or a level of expectation for each of those program areas, but as a global statement, I don’t believe we have one. Once again, I will speak to the department and see if we can track something down in that sense.
Thanks to the Minister. I appreciate the commitment to look into this. As the Minister for Human Resources and the Minister responsible for the employment of all the people within our public service, I would like to ask him about the issue of time off at Christmas and at New Year’s. It was negotiated quite some years ago. I would like to know from the Minister whether or not there has ever been any evaluation or review of the impact that that closure has had on the service that we provide to our residents. Thank you.
I don’t believe a review of that nature has been conducted. I can say that there are a number of GNWT employees who really do like the Donnie Days and enjoy getting the time off. With respect to the impact on customer service, we don’t have that information. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Final, short supplementary, Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thanks to the Minister. I am sure that there are employees who enjoy a paid week at Christmas. We all would, I am sure. I would like to ask my last question to the Minister. If there has not ever been an evaluation done, I would like to ask the Minister if he would commit to consider doing a review or an evaluation and look at the benefit or the lack of benefit of keeping offices open over Christmas, whether it be every second day or every day except for stat holidays, half staff, full staff. Would he look at that kind of an evaluation or review? Thank you.
Just for some clarity, not all GNWT employees are eligible for the mandatory with-pay days during the actual Christmas holidays. Every department is asked to do a bit of an analysis of their department to determine which services are continuous or required over the holiday season. Things like health care workers and correctional workers and certain positions in Transportation as well as some positions in Public Works that are responsible for maintaining buildings and actual public safety and some positions in the Department of Human Resources like medical travel; these positions don’t shut down, so not all positions shut down over the Christmas season. Those positions that fall under that category, they actually take their leave during the year at some other point as operational requirements allow. There are a lot of people within the GNWT who are required to provide services over the holiday season. It will stay that way. As far as a review, we haven’t done one. I will talk to the department and I will get back to the Member. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. The honourable Member for Range Lake, Mr. Dolynny.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Earlier today in my Member’s statement I spoke about something that affects many of our youth across our territory and that subject is bullying and cyber-bullying. It is clear that many jurisdictions across Canada have been realizing the need for proper legislation to allow schools and authorities the ability to deal with the burden of bullies and their victims.
Admittedly, at this time I have to give congratulatory remarks to the province of Quebec for their most recent introduction of measures that deal with bullying in schools. I am hoping the GNWT will follow suit. My question to the Minister of Education, given the nature of the topic and the need to remove this intimidation in our schools, is the Minister and his department prepared to bring forward legislative means in the form of anti-bullying or cyber-bullying legislation in the coming months? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. The Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Lafferty.
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Those are the areas that we are exploring with other provincial jurisdictions. We knew that it is a controversial issue. There have been some incidents in the past in other provinces, provincial jurisdictions. We want to explore further and do our research. Some legislation is working and some isn’t. We need to find out the pros and cons of why it is not working. Not only that, but I would like to work with Municipal and Community Affairs, especially with the Proud2bNWT.ca focusing on the youth and also the Department of Justice Not Us! campaign focusing on the youth and drugs. It all involves anti-bullying in the schools, in the communities. We need to have a coordinated approach. That is what our focus is on right now. Mahsi.
Mr. Speaker, thank you to the Minister for giving us a broad overview but it sounds like there is some work that wants to be done but is not being done. Until such time as we need to raise awareness of bullying in school in our system, can the Minister describe, because we are still working on such actions at this point, what exactly are the legal recourses for the school administration to deal with bullying as it stands today? Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, there are certain processes in place with various school boards to have their own policies. Each of the school boards have different policies in place to deal with bullying in the schools. When there is an issue they deal with the school boards and the superintendents and also they deal with my department because I need to work closely with the board of education across the Northwest Territories to deal with 49 schools. Those are some of the processes that I outlined. Mahsi.
Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the Minister’s response on policy. I am talking about legislation. These are two different things. They need to protect our students, and policy obviously is not doing what it is meant to do. In fact, I want to take this one step further. If the Minister’s response is such that we are still researching a subject which is being dealt with on a provincial basis today and we have to wait for such means, it may suggest that maybe the Members on this side of the House might have to come forward with a private member’s bill. I know the Members here are going to be very fashionable bringing that forward maybe in the months to come. Until that could be drafted and, again, if we are waiting for the government side of the House to come forward, are there any other supportive or communicative strategies the Minister is aware of to raise awareness of bullying and cyber-bullying in the interim as we are waiting for this type of legislation? Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, I realize there is a difference between policy and legislation. We currently don’t have legislation on bullying. That is part of the reason why I am saying that there are policies in place that deal with the school boards. At the same time, we are exploring those areas. In order to bring legislation into effect, I need to deal with the standing committee. If there are going to be changes to policy and legislation, then we need to deal with the committee as we move forward. Those are options that we are currently exploring. I am hoping to bring that forward within due time. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. The Member for Nahendeh, Mr. Menicoche.
Thank you very much. I just want to follow up with the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment about capitalizing the needs of schools in a couple of communities in my riding, most particularly the Charles Yohin School in Fort Liard and the Charles Tetcho in Trout Lake. I’d like to ask the Minister what steps are necessary in order to move from the capital needs assessment portion of the planning of these schools and get these schools incorporated into our five-year capital plan.
Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. The Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Lafferty.
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. With all of the capital infrastructure, the process of going through the budget planning process to deal with capital, and we do have an area of technical or evaluation of the schools. So we do, upon requests, evaluation of the schools. For particular schools, whether it be Trout Lake or Liard and other areas of infrastructure that’s badly needed in the community or in need of repair, then we do an analysis in those areas and we’ve done those in the Member’s riding as well. So when it comes to the capital planning process, these items will be discussed for sure. Mahsi.
Thank you very much. I’d like to work with the department as we move towards the capital planning process in the springtime come May and June. I was just asking about getting the process on the capital plan. I know that in other departments they use planning studies. So I would like to start with that. When can we look at doing planning studies for these two schools in order to put an amount on them? Thank you.
I need to find out from my department exactly where the status is on those two particular schools that the Member is referring to, particularly on the planning studies, if they’ve done one already; if not, then when is that going to be happening. So I can get back to the Member on those two schools that he’s referring to. Mahsi.
Thank you very much. So the next step is to raise that in the capital planning. As well, I think the key objective here is to move it from the capital needs assessment to the capital planning studies, and also I’d like to invite the Minister to do a tour of the riding so that he can see for himself the needs of these schools and the amount of children that are in them. As well, what efforts have been done to date in these two communities in looking at and assessing the schools? Thank you.
We’ve had consultants work on various school projects, whether it be evaluation, the status of each school, and there’s been a highlight of minor or major repairs that need to be initiated. There’s been some minor capital infrastructure that has been identified for these two schools. So it is currently in the works, and in moving forward, if there are other issues that we need to discuss, then the capital plan process will be the opportune time. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Final supplementary, Mr. Menicoche. Okay. The Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In my Member’s statement today I talked about the issue of process and the whole underlying theme here is it’s not about the Betty House in particular, which if money made itself available I would certainly support transition shelter for women and children in every regional centre of the Northwest Territories, but as we all know that’s certainly not possible. But it’s sad because it comes under the halo of a great launch and a significant achievement under a contribution from this government towards this project. But yet at the end of the day Members are left wondering where did this come from.
My question will be directed to the Premier, strictly about process of his government working with our side of the House. Would the Premier explain why weren’t MLAs kept informed of this particular announcement? Because we have no idea where the money was coming from, we had no idea this project launch was going to happen, and e-mailing us just before the Assembly sat is not communicating. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The honourable Premier, Mr. McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would have thought the Member would have been right on top of this as this Betty House is in his riding, but the money was approved in the 2009-2010 budget through Canada’s Economic Action Plan. It was carried over and it was reviewed by the Standing Committee on Social Programs. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
You can tell from the Premier’s response there about how did I know, clearly I must have hit a vein of reality here. The fact is this side of the House is not fully kept apprised as to what actions were happening. This particular project did not get the vetting of the standing committee in advance of this particular situation, and as I said in my Member’s statement, clearly whenever a significant contribution happens for any particular region, the MLA is informed. Certainly not only myself, as the Premier has readily informed of being the local MLA, there are seven MLAs in Yellowknife and something could have gone out in writing to us.
What actions is this Premier going to do and take today to correct these steps of blatant insults to this side of the House?
It’s my understanding that the Standing Committee on Social Programs was informed that work was ongoing on finalizing this agreement at a meeting in December 2010. Also through normal protocol and convention we give additional advanced notice at least an hour before we announce it, which we did on Friday of last week. Thank you.
I want to acknowledge the tone seems to have changed in the Premier’s response towards me. I want to thank him for that because I felt very insulted by I should have known, and the fact is I think other people at the same time were insulted.
This being vetted in 2010, well, I can tell you in 2011 I asked questions specifically about what type of contribution from the NWT Housing Corporation will be made towards the Betty House. At the time the Minister of Housing had said well, geez, there’s no money, the wallet is bare. So in fact this contribution seems to have come out of the air. So how are we going to correct these particular problems and where did the money come from? Because it would have been nice to be vetted in this current Assembly. Thank you.
I’ll try to be very careful about my tone, but the money was approved in the 2009-2010 budget through Canada’s Economic Action Plan. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final supplementary, Mr. Hawkins.
