Thank you. If it’s the wish of the House and committee directs us to start exploring the legislation further, we will bring forward an LP and we’ll follow the normal legislative proposal process. Obviously, if it’s the wish of the House, I’d like to have it done in the life of this Assembly. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. The Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I had a concern from one of the residents in the Sahtu. When the Minister of ENR talked about caribou and outfitters, my question to the Minister is before any tags go to any outfitters, that due diligence is there, that the caribou herd is healthy and the first tags go to resident hunters.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The Minister of Environment and Natural Resources, Mr. Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m not sure what herd the Member is talking about. Most of the herds, with the exception of a very small harvest on the Porcupine, there is only Aboriginal subsistence harvests, plus there’s the banned area outside of Yellowknife, which has specific restrictions. But there are no other harvests going on in the Territories as far as I’m aware. Thank you.
I do apologize for not being specific. The concern came from my riding and all this concern was that before any tags go to any of the outfitters, that tags for caribou go to the resident hunters so they can feed their families. That’s the question I asked of the Minister.
We have a working arrangement, a very close relationship with the co-management boards in the Sahtu as well. So as we look at the health of the herds and if there are any decisions made to change or adjust the harvesting, that will be done through that due process with ENR involved. There is a clear ranking system where Aboriginal subsistence harvest is protected and that is, as in the case of the banned area, the last one to be impacted. As you work your way up from the commercial harvest outfitters, resident hunters up to the Aboriginal harvest and that is the process, and there’s been no change to that process and we honour that most insidiously.
Mr. Miltenberger talked about the sequencing and that it will go through a process for any caribou tags that are going to be going out to the people. First we looked at the Aboriginal hunters, trappers, then northern residents and then possibly to the outfitters if there is enough healthy caribou for the taking. Is that the sequencing as I understand it so that I can tell my people this is how it will be played out?
Yes, that is the sequence and the fact is there is no other harvest across the territory except for the small harvest in the Porcupine, except for the Aboriginal subsistence harvest at this juncture. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.
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 you.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The Minister of Health and Social Services, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We continue to do recruitment. We work with Human Resources to work with each of the health and social services authorities on recruitment. We do have a joint recruitment system. Then once the doctors accept jobs or whatnot, they would then have an option to go to where they wish to go, in most cases. When we’re recruiting for doctors in general, usually the doctors end up here, in the history. We have a website, we are working with a couple of universities in the South where we’re working with – they’re like interns I suppose, but I forget the name, they’re residents I think – referred to as residents that we bring up to the North and they work at the hospitals here to see if they’d like to come to the North. Those are some of the things that we’re doing, off the top of my head. Thank you.
Thanks to the Minister. I appreciate that we are doing all these things, but they seem to be the same things that we’ve been doing for quite some time and in order to affect reform in order to make our health system more efficient, I have to encourage the Minister to change the way that we’re doing things and I didn’t hear that in his answer. I’d like to know from the Minister, my statement talked about that Australia uses telehealth to do diagnoses, to talk to patients, to assist them from a distance. I’d like to know what we use our telehealth system for. Just what exactly, what activities, what purposes do we use it for? Thank you.
Thank you. We do use telehealth. We do have patients and nurses or patients and doctors that are in the more remote communities or even in the regional centres, depending on what the issue is, to communicate with the doctors here in Yellowknife if need be. Those are the type of things we’re using telehealth for at this time. We would be able to expand the use of telehealth once the fibre optic links are completed across the territory. Thank you.
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?
Some of the telehealth communications have prevented the necessity to use medical travel, if that’s what the question is. In a sense, the doctor was able to assist the nurse or another doctor at the other end of the telehealth screen so that individuals could be properly diagnosed by the person that’s with the patient. In a sense, I guess it has lessened some of the medical travel costs by using telehealth.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final supplementary, Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. To the Minister, I’d like to know what we can do or what the Minister has in plans to do to try and expand that use of telehealth in terms of diagnostics. Are there any targets? We probably don’t know how much we’re using it now, but I’d like to know from the Minister whether or not there are any targets that the department has set to expand the use of telehealth for medical purposes.
We would like to use telehealth wherever we can. There is an issue with bandwidth, as well, at some of the health centres in the various communities, but if we can use telehealth, we will use telehealth as much as we can. We will expand the use of it as it goes along. As the health professionals get more comfortable with it, we will be expanding the use of telehealth.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The honourable Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have one question to the Premier. The Premier has indicated in the past week the amount of money that the Northwest Territories is losing each day. I want to ask the Premier if he could be a little more specific on the amount and where that amount is coming from. Is it coming from the royalties? Is it coming from the Norman Wells field? Where did he get this number from?
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The honourable Premier, Mr. McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It’s actually quite a simplistic number. We expect that the revenues from devolution alone would be about $60 million a year. There’s 365 days in a year. If you do the math it works out to $165,000 a day. That’s not including all the money for the employees and the O and M and so on that would also be devolved.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. My questions are for the Minister of Health and Social Services.
Can the Minister provide a list of all of the lakes in Nahendeh that have had public advisories regarding the consumption of fish over the past five years?
Can the Minister provide details of how and when these lakes were tested?
Can the Minister advise whether the GNWT or federal government has any concrete plans to conduct future sampling or detailed studies of these Nahendeh lakes?
Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. The honourable Member for Inuvik Boot Lake, Mr. Moses.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My written question is for the Minister of Public Works and Services.
Can the Minister provide an inventory of Government of the Northwest Territories infrastructure currently available in the communities of Inuvik, Fort Simpson and Norman Wells that could house alcohol and drug treatment centres?
Can the Minister provide current operations and maintenance costs for these buildings?
I wish to table the Status Report of the Auditor General of Canada to the Northwest Territories Legislative Assembly.
Item 15, notices of motion. Item 16, notices of motion for first reading of bills. Item 17, motions. Item 18, first reading of bills. Item 19, second reading of bills. Item 20, consideration in Committee of the Whole of bills and other matters: Tabled Document 2-17(2), Supplementary Estimates (Infrastructure Expenditures), No. 3, 2011-2012; and Tabled Document 3-17(2), Supplementary Estimates (Operations Expenditures), No. 3, 2011-2012, with Mrs. Groenewegen in the chair.
I’d like to call Committee of the Whole to order. We have two items before us today. What is the wish of the committee? Mr. Menicoche.
Thank you very much, Madam Chair. The committee would like to consider Tabled Document 3-17(2) and Tabled Document 2-17(2).
Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. Is committee agreed?
Agreed.
Thank you. We’ll take a break and then we will resume with that.
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I’d like to call Committee of the Whole back to order. Where we left off yesterday on Tabled Document 3-17(2), Supplementary Estimates (Operations Expenditures), No. 3, 2011-2012, we left off on page 10. We had concluded Health and we’re ready to move on to the Department of Justice now. I’ll ask the Minister if he would like to bring witnesses into the Chamber.
Yes, Madam Chair.
Thank you. Does committee agree?
Agreed.
I’ll ask the Sergeant-at-Arms to please escort the witnesses into the Chamber.
Mr. Miltenberger, for the record, please.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I have with me Deputy Minister Mike Aumond and deputy secretary of the FMB, Sandy Kalgutkar.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Department of Justice, operations expenditures, activity, law enforcement, not previously authorized, $840,000.
Agreed.
