Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to follow up on my Member’s statement. I have some questions for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment with regard to the focus that we put on heritage in the NWT and in the activities of the department. I’d like to ask the Minister if he could explain to me and to the House what we currently do to support heritage activities. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Lafferty.
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. As you know, currently we provide some funding allocation to culture and heritage organizations. Within that, there are approximately 15 different organizations that we sponsor. Out of the 15, there are approximately seven of them who are with respect to the cultural projects, heritage, Yamozha Kue Society, the museum, historical centres, heritage centres and so forth and also the Minister’s Cultural Circle is another venue that we recognize for valuable contribution towards the Northwest Territories on preserving our culture, language and our heritage. Those individuals will definitely fall within the groups and organizations and also Minister’s choice. Those are venues that are available to them so we continue to strive towards that. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, thanks to the Minister. I appreciate that we do, as a government, provide some funding for heritage activities, but the Minister received this letter from the nine organizations who are looking for more funding, obviously, everybody wants more funding, but they are also looking for a little more assistance, I think, to sort of profile some of their activities.
To quote from the letter, the activities of these nine organizations create an enhanced learning, research, tourism, employment and business opportunities across the NWT, and that’s a pretty broad reach. I’d like to know from the Minister – he’s mentioned the number of activities that are out there – how much funding. What are the dollars that are available to these nine heritage organizations to promote their activities and to actually do their programs? Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, as I stated in my response to the letter, I was in full agreement with the suggestion of the heritage, culture and history. They all complement each other. I would like to take this opportunity to better inform the new part of the Minister’s Cultural Circle Recognition Program. With the funding the Member alluded to, I can certainly provide the detailed list. I do have approximately $2.2 million that is going towards all 15 different organizations. Out of that, it will be what the Member is referring to, those nine organizations, and I can provide the breakdown. Mahsi.
Mr. Speaker, thanks to the Minister. I appreciate that commitment and I look forward to the information. I think the Minister said that he has responded to the letter that came from the nine organizations. I don’t believe the Minister copied us on that letter. If he did, I haven’t seen it yet.
I’d like to know from the Minister what the Minister’s response was to the four or five requests that were in the letter that he received in December. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, the letter I was referring to was a response to the NWT Mine Heritage Society, that letter I received, and I responded to the individual, the president. Also, there was a distribution list with all the MLAs. The information has been sent and shared with the NWT Mine Heritage Society as a response. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Final, short supplementary, Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Not having seen what the response to the group’s requests were, I know the letter came on letterhead from the NWT Mine Heritage Society, but it certainly was signed by nine different organizations. I’d like to ask the Minister if he at least is considering expanding the Minister’s Cultural Circle to be a Minister’s culture and heritage circle in terms of the awards that he presents on an annual basis. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, the Minister’s Culture Circle, again, does highlight those individual groups and organizations, also individuals. There are elders, youth, and Minister’s choice. It does consist of heritage as well, so it’s not exclusive just to the culture and language. It covers heritage as well. In order to fulfill those requests, we need to have those discussions with the various groups. We’ve done that with the Minister’s Culture Circle before we initiated the project, but to consult and engage with public stakeholders. We do have a program in place that already has been very successful to date, a couple of years now. The Minister’s Culture Circle will continue to promote that. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Member for Inuvik Boot Lake, Mr. Moses.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are for the Minister of Health and Social Services following up on my Member’s statement with what residents have been asking for, and one in particular is with the Midwifery Program and dollars that are being allocated for this program here that was a suggestion brought forth by Members of the Assembly. I’m just wondering what the intention of dollars that are being allocated for this Midwifery Program, where they are going to be allocated and what the intention is of those dollars. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Moses. Minister of Health and Social Services, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The plan for 2013-14 in this budget session for midwifery is community consultation activities for Hay River, review and update NWT Midwifery Practice Framework and midwifery regulations, hire a Midwifery Program development consultant and midwifery project coordinator at the department to support ongoing planning and program development activities, Hay River community Midwifery Program planning activities, and community consultation activities for Beaufort-Delta communities. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, with all the mention of community consulting and consulting with Inuvik, I want to ask the Minister of Health and Social Services, is he familiar with the Department of Health and Social Services’ Midwifery Program review and expansion analysis midwifery options report of March 2012. Is the Minister familiar with that report? Can he confirm, please?
I am familiar with the report, I don’t have all the details of the report, but I do have enough details in the report to move forward in the direction that the department is taking it. Thank you.
Thank you. The Minister just mentioned that he knows enough in the report to move forward on what the report is saying. The report is saying we need a community-based midwifery report. I mean, if he knows enough to move forward on that, why aren’t we doing that and we’re going into consultation where the consultation is all done in this report? So it really makes me wonder about that.
Can the Minister kind of confirm why dollars are being spent in regulations and standards when our previous Minister of Health has this signed off on the standards of practice for registered midwives? Can the Minister justify why he’s putting more money into regulations and standards when there’s already one in the report? Thank you.
Thank you. Midwifery is not a cost-savings measure. Midwifery is to provide a service that will be put into place for the health of the children and for the long-term benefits to the health system. It’s not an immediate cost savings. Any cost savings that would come as a result of midwifery through medical travel and so on will be eaten up by incremental costs of hiring midwives. So we can’t approach this and say we’re going to put Midwifery Program feet on the ground right away and start seeing the results of savings. That’s not going to happen.
What will happen is, in the long run, as we expand a proper Midwifery Program, we’re going to see the development of the children that are working with midwives, and that’s why we’re trying to expand from a community Midwifery Program, which has regulations, to a regional Midwifery Program, which needs updated regulations, and to a territorial Midwifery Program, which will need further regulations. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Moses.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It’s been a long week and I came into the House this morning pretty tired and I needed something to wake me up, and I’m really glad the Minister’s statement did wake me up here, yup. There’s a lot of savings, this investment that we’re doing into midwives, and I’m really concerned about what the Minister just said in terms of cost-savings measures. There’s so many different cost savings, so many benefits. I’d like to ask the Minister where the report is and where does he get his findings from to justify and confirm what he just previously said in his statement. Thank you.
Thank you. Most of it is common sense. The reduction in medical travel will happen, yes, if you had midwives in Yellowknife. However, right now people are coming to Yellowknife to have babies. People are coming to Inuvik to have babies. That’s not going to change. Whether the midwives are in Inuvik or the midwives are in Yellowknife, that’s not changing. The people are still coming here. There’s still medical travel to come here. So that’s the territorial program, same with Inuvik.
Now in Fort Smith, about half of the people that are having babies in Fort Smith are still coming to Yellowknife. Now that they have physicians, that number may change. Hay River does not have physicians. So as we expand Hay River, we’re anticipating that similar numbers may result in Hay River. So there is where you will see some cost savings. Half of the people in Hay River may not have to travel to Yellowknife to have their babies. It’s a community program. However, the savings will be less than the incremental costs of hiring midwives and paying their salaries. It’s pretty simple.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The Member for Range Lake, Mr. Dolynny.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Interesting morning. I rise today and follow up on my Member’s statement today on what did the Department of Health and Social Services learn from the Minister of Finance budget housing dialogue 2012 talks this past fall. As indicated, Health is cited by most participants as the area for most opportunities of savings.
I have been critical since day one on this job on the lack of spending for health initiatives and I stand steadfast to this. However, today I want to work on the other side of that equals sign and focus on savings of opportunity, especially medical travel and medevac services. So my questions today will be for the Minister of Health and Social Services.
Could the Minister of Health and Social Services indicate what his department has done as a result of the findings of Budget Dialogue 2012 with the residents of the Northwest Territories? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. The Minister of Health and Social Services, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The department recognizes that prevention is probably the key to long-term savings for the department. Some of the money that we’re putting into the system on prevention, at the end of the day, downstream, will have positive financial benefits to the department. So that is probably the main thing.
In as far as medical travel goes, we recognize that maybe medical travel is not as efficient as it should be. There are a lot of pressures on medical travel. People put pressures on medical travel and sometimes individuals that may not be eligible for an escort, as an example, will request one and then there’s pressure put upon departments for the department to provide that additional cost. So, some of those things are there. Then we rely on Stanton to deliver it, thinking that Stanton was the best location for the delivery of the program, but because of a lot of the politics around it and everything, we’re now reviewing that one item, medical travel, one program, and we’re thinking about centralizing that at the department. Thank you.
Thank you, I appreciate the Minister’s response, but I’m referring to the budget dialogue, the voices of the people. More importantly, what opportunities for efficiencies in medical travel services has the Department of Health and Social Services identified as a result of such talks with residents, and are these recommendations in action today or are they coming soon? Thank you.
As a Minister of Health, I’m trying to develop things today that will have a savings in the future. I recognize that the Minister of Finance has done the tour on the ways that they can put the savings into the budget and, as the Member indicates, a lot of them are related to Health as a department, and consulting with my senior managers and finding out how do we think that we can meet some of the objectives of the people in the Territories and that’s what we’re doing. We’re putting together things that we think are huge cost drivers in the system and we’re trying to curb that now so that they will stop being huge cost drivers in the system. An example of that is addictions, early childhood development and many other items that we have in our budget that are working in that direction. Thank you.
Thank you, I appreciate the Minister’s response, but again, I want to focus my questions and response to the medical travel and the concerns the residents have. So a medical travel review has been promised for years now. What assurances can the Minister of Health and Social Services offer and to the people of the Northwest Territories that we will see an improved and more efficient service and travel policy in the life of the 17th Assembly? Thank you.
Thank you. I don’t know how long the promise of reviewing medical travel has gone on. I do know that at this time we are a bit behind in our schedule for reviewing medical travel. Like I indicated in the House yesterday, there are a lot of pressures in our system, a lot of pressures to do a lot of different things in the system. As we had the human resources in the department allocated to certain projects, this is one of the projects which is kind of stumbling out of the blocks, because there’s a lot of real high-priority issues for the department. We are planning to do a review of it and we’re planning on trying to make it more efficient. If the plan was to review it and we didn’t think we could make medical travel more efficient, then we probably wouldn’t do the review, but this is the thought that somehow, some way we will make medical travel more efficient and also dealing with the politics of medical travel too.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final supplementary, Mr. Dolynny.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m still concerned and confused. We’ve heard the voice of reason of the people. We should treat these as ladders of opportunity to make meaningful changes, especially with what we’ve heard on medical travel from our residents. We’ve heard that the Minister is a great proponent of common-sense approach policies so I’m going to ask the Minister: Will we have a common-sense approach to this policy, in terms of using what we know from the residents and applying those today, so that we have meaningful changes to our Medical Travel Policy at this juncture within the life of this physical Assembly?
Yes, we will continue to employ common sense. The medical travel, we must remember that many individuals who have their opinion on medical travel is based on what they have gone through themselves. There are many, many, many scenarios with medical travel. We have to look at all of them. We also have to take into account the delivery of the program, the politics of it, the regulations. All of those aspects are things that we’re looking at to try and make it more efficient, and to develop a policy that does have common sense and is responsible through the government.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The honourable Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In my Member’s statement I indicated a date of 2038, 25 years away. I will be, roughly, about 75 years old. I want to ask the Minister, what then? Once the social funding is done with the federal government, are we moving towards where people in the Northwest Territories will then all own the 2,400 units that are right now in stock?
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The honourable Minister responsible for the NWT Housing Corporation, Mr. Robert McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. First of all I want to correct the Member. The Member will be 79 years old in 2038, because I’ll be 78. We continue to raise this issue with our counterparts in Ottawa. We try to get them to see the fact that it is affecting how we administer public housing. I think, between now and then, if they don’t move on this, a lot of decisions may have to be made within the Housing Corporation and the government as to what exactly we want to be. Do we want to be just a social housing provider, or continue with all the programs that we offer now?
I want to ask the Minister, did he say “roughly”? I will be roughly about 78, quick calculations. I want to ask the Minister, is this something we could look at on a territorial strategy for housing, or national housing strategy, that we can think about these types of things that are going to be put onto our future generations with regard to housing in the Northwest Territories?
We do have our Building for the Future, the Northwest Territories strategy for housing looking into the future. There probably is a lot of work that’s going on nationally. A lot of the communities and jurisdictions down south, I think, are going to feel the effect a lot more than we are because their public housing and social housing portfolios are much larger than ours. It is a great concern across this country, not only for us but it affects us quite a bit because we have a majority of our houses, especially in the small communities, that are public housing partly funded by the money that we get from CMHC. We have our strategy and we continue to try and look at ways that we can make improvements to how we do business, cut down the cost of operating our social housing, removing some of public housing from stock. We’ve been quite busy working on our plans and dealing with the declining CMHC funding.
I was reading a book, and in the book there was a quote that said the home is the heart of the nation. In 2038, if that’s the case with the federal government, they’re going to rip the heart of our nation out here. I want to ask the Minister – I know he’s working hard on reducing the public housing units and in regard to his strategy – will this strategy meet the point in 25 years that we will not have any public housing? Will all those homes belong to people in our communities?
We would have to look at that. Ultimately, our goal in the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation is to try and see as many homeowners as possible. We have to recognize, also, that there is always going to be a need for public housing and public housing clients. It’s a bit of a balancing act and we have to weigh those out. Ultimately, we’d like to get people into home ownership. Some of the changes that we want to make now will probably have long-term effects and we’ll have to wait until 2038, if things don’t change by then, to see where the Northwest Territories is at as far as providing housing. We do know that we are trying to address the issue and we’ll continue to do so. That includes bringing our concerns to the federal Minister and the federal government.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final supplementary, Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Minister earlier made a ministerial statement on MACA and talked about community ownership and community involvement in planning. I want to ask the Minister if his government colleagues have talked about some type of territorial housing strategy sometime within the life of this government to look at year 2038.
As I mentioned before, we do have the Building for the Future, a strategic framework for housing that we just recently completed. In there it talks about a lot of the ways that we want to deal with the declining CMHC funding. Also, the Member talked about communities. We’ve had communities in the past that have taken on the responsibility of administering their own public housing and realized that it was a lot more than they had bargained for, so they had turned the administration back over to the NWT Housing Corporation. We’re always open to partnerships. I think we’ve proven that in the past. We’d be more than willing to sit down with any community government that has some kind of desire to administer social housing and public housing in their community. However, we will make sure they realize it’s a huge challenge and they need to be ready for it.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In my Member’s statement today I talked about the need for a new territorial courthouse. Needs have certainly changed, but the space has not. You can only reorganize the existing courthouse so many times before it becomes unpalatable. I just want to say two more things, which is, the courthouse as it exists now doesn’t flow nicely when you consider the responsibility and sensitivity needed towards sexual assault victims where sometimes accused, the victims and the witnesses are all huddled together in the same area. It just makes it unpalatable.
The last thing I want to say on this point is, quite often when the judges call people to appear before court, whether it’s the day’s docket or for jury duty, they’re not only in the room standing against the walls, they’re standing out in the hall, down the spiral staircase, and into the first floor. All problems with the existing courthouse.
My question will be to the Premier. Will the Premier direct the program review office to review the functionality of our existing courthouse, and weight and balance that fairly to evaluate the need for a new independent courthouse to serve the citizens of the Northwest Territories, and ensure that people are getting justice safely and fairly?
