Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member’s statement earlier, leading up to these questions, made a number of comments about secret negotiations and so on. I will say for the record that there were no secret negotiations. All bilateral discussions that may have happened between the GNWT and the federal government, specifically because there are areas that we clearly are for or would be, those issues and discussions were shared at the main table with all of the partners that were at the table.
As for signing this agreement, there are many things to be negotiated as we go forward. One of those is the escalation of the dollars identified for doing the work that would be required of us as the Government of the Northwest Territories.
The negotiations up to establishing the numbers for the initial transfer were very intense, as we clearly stated that we felt, under the existing authorities, we need to do a job that would require more resources than is being expended now. We have that agreement. In fact, that is one of the reasons why we would say that we are in agreement with signing this.
Other areas that are of concern to many of the Aboriginal groups, as well, are around waste sites and monitoring and management. There is a chapter 8 that goes through quite a number of issues that look at addressing what we would do as we enter into negotiations. I think this is another reason why having the Aboriginal groups and governments come back to the table to help influence the discussions is probably one of the biggest things, since we hold our environment in such high regard in the North. That would be one of those that would draw us back to the table, I would say. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, what is the Government of the Northwest Territories doing to ensure that the waste sites that are listed or that are contemplated in such devolution agreement in the future are cleaned up in a timely fashion? What is the time frame for this? Is this going to go on forever or is there going to be a time frame for a clean-up of these waste sites? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, by signing the agreement-in-principle, we actually kick in the year of process that has been under discussion for quite some time. We have already done a fair bit of work in the North around waste sites that are there, looking at historical programs that were run under previous and ministrations and decisions made under previous governments, federal governments as well. That is why there has been such an emphasis put on this document. It triggers the work that needs to be done. For example, in the responsibility of waste sites, chapter 8, point 3 talks about Canada will be responsible for management of waste sites on public lands which were wholly created prior to the effective date and it speaks of what our responsibility would be after the effective date of final agreement, and then it goes into a lot of detail about some of those subject areas. But, clearly, by signing the agreement-in-principle, we also trigger work that is going to be done on clearly establishing what is out there and comparing that work. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, my last question is the area of time frames. There is a possibility inside the devolution agreement that these sites could be just left as is for extended periods of time. Also, in the economic measures in the AIP, they indicate that economic measures could be accrued to Aboriginal governments. This is an opportunity for Aboriginal governments to clean up with the GNWT at the federal government cost to clean up those sites. Why isn’t the government insisting that the federal government take responsibility in a kindly fashion for cleaning up industrial sites established under their control since 1984? Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, the identification and the categorization of waste sites, those were decisions made by previous governments that, as I said, the preliminary work was done. Quite clearly, we leave the responsibility for decisions made by the federal government prior to the signing of the final agreement is their responsibility needing to go forward, but they still have to share that work with us and come up with a budget that we would have to negotiate on dealing with the full remediation of those sites or that they would remain holding onto the liability of those sites. For example, by signing the agreement-in-principle, Canada will develop at its own expense a preliminary inventory of waste sites, and in compiling such preliminary inventory, they will have to share that initial summary with us through their own historical records and current records and we will, as well, do our own work in reviewing that. That will help us as we go forward and coming up with the right negotiation for dollars in remediation going forward and who holds onto that liability going forward. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Roland. Final supplementary, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Dene people see this as a loophole by the federal government. It does not seem fair when the federal government designed and implemented a regulatory system, will take 50 percent of the royalties on these developments but won’t pay for the cleanups. This is a loophole. Why is there no definite plan in place to place full responsibility for the remediation that’s needed on the federal government? Thank you.
Thank you. Clearly, we know the importance of our environment to northern peoples and that is why so much effort has been placed through the working group of our Aboriginal partners and the Government of the Northwest Territories. We’ve learned from some of our own previous transfers and transfers to other provinces and territories, in making sure we’ve set up a process that will clearly identify the challenges, the risks, the liabilities and who they belong to. So as the Member is saying, why haven’t we done that? That work is about to be done because we’ve signed the AIP. Otherwise, we would continue to work on the basis we have in the past of identifying those sites.
The federal government has remediated a number of sites across the North and are in the process of remediating sites as we speak in a number of areas. So that work continues, but as we now, through the signing of this agreement-in-principle, will be able to clearly identify going forward into the future what those challenges are, what the risks are and who should hold onto the liability and then the budgets of what needs to be done going forward in that area. So we do place a high priority on this.
Again, when it comes to the identification, we talk about this preliminary inventory of waste sites in the Northwest Territories, talk about the location, the nature of the site, the summary of information going to Canada about the waste site, including location, former use, current use or status, known operation, groundwater analysis. So many things will begin to be shared by Canada with us and they will have to share such information with all the parties. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Roland. The honourable Member for Kam Lake, Mr. Ramsay.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’ve got questions today for the Minister of Health and Social Services. Getting back to my Member’s statement where I was talking about northern nursing grads, this year we’re expecting to graduate 19 and next year 16 and then in 2013, 32. So we’re going to have close to 65 northern nursing grads enter into our health care system hopefully in the next three years.
I’d like to ask the Minister, it was almost four years ago she went to Aurora College and spoke to the students just entering the program, promising them jobs upon completion of the program. I’d like to ask her what planning has gone into help integrate northern nursing grads into our health care system. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. The honourable Minister responsible for Health and Social Services, Ms. Lee.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There’s no question that our Northern Nursing Program is a success story. We have produced a lot of excellent graduates and the last fiscal year we were able to place all 11 of them; nine of them in Yellowknife and two in Hay River. So, Mr. Speaker, I’m confident that we will be able to use the training that these nurses have received in various communities and health centres and hospitals around the Territories. Thank you.
Thank you. I hope the Minister can appreciate the fact that these graduates are months away from completing the program, yet when they look at the government website and any job postings, there are just none available and they’re left scratching their head saying, well, the Minister was here three years ago and promised us jobs, where are they? Then they see locum and agency nurses working in our health authorities and at Stanton and they wonder where are the postings. I’d like to ask the Minister if she can explain the fact that we have these locum and agency nurses here and no job postings for nurses. Thank you.
Thank you. We are in communication with the graduating class of nurses at Aurora College. They are made aware that they wouldn’t be applying for jobs on the website, that they will be eligible to join the Graduate Employment Program process, that we will have a list of jobs available for them. HR and HSSA, Department of Health staff, are going in there to talk to the nursing graduates and we will be working with them to find placements for them. They will be asked to give their preference of what communities they would like to practice in. We want to match those, but those are not always possible.
This is an NWT employment program. The Graduate Employment Program is an NWT program, this is Government of the NWT. We would like to recruit and retain nurses to work in all parts of the Territories, so we are fully committed to working with the nursing grads to match them with employment. Thank you.
Thank you. It sounds like as far as the department is concerned, it’s a year-to-year process and they just take each year as it comes. I’m not sure if coming up with a better plan and a long-range plan to accommodate, like I said, 65 grads in the next three years might be something that’s worthwhile to the department and to this government. I’d like to ask the Minister, does the Department of Health and Social Services and the health authorities consider positions that are currently filled by locums and agency nurses to be vacant and why aren’t those positions posted? Thank you.
Thank you. As we’ve discussed over the last two days, the use of agency nurses has gone down substantially. Locum nurses we have in Stanton, for example, are really, really hard to recruit nurses. So as the Member knows, or anybody who knows about nursing, nurses all come with different training, different backgrounds, different skill sets that we need. So I don’t think we should be distracted by having to use some locum nurses that means that we’re not giving those jobs to new grads. New grads have to go through the Graduate Employment Program, they need more training in different settings before they can be put into practice settings. They wouldn’t be, I don’t think, ready to apply to a job that’s available on the website right away. So I’ve stated, and of course we work year by year, every year we get a new graduating class of nurses and as I’ve stated, the Department of HR and my department and the health authorities are and will continue to work with the graduating class to place them in an appropriate setting and in as a compatible setting as possible, but we need to ask the grads to be able to look beyond Yellowknife if they can’t be matched in Yellowknife. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Lee. Your final supplementary, Mr. Ramsay.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Sounds like we’ve resigned ourselves to the fact that locum nurses are going to be in these positions and the department and the authorities are not going to post the positions to be filled by resident nurses here in the Northwest Territories. Is that what I’m hearing the Minister say? That locums are there permanently, we’re not posting those jobs? I’d like to ask the Minister why aren’t we posting the jobs that locums are filling today. Thank you.
Good question.
Mr. Speaker, it has to go without saying that our system would rather hire our own local nurses before we would have agency nurses or locum nurses. So if there are any jobs that are...
Mr. Speaker, as I’ve stated, if the Member would listen, these nurse graduates don’t go through a regular hiring process; they go through a Graduate Employment Program. They go through a separate preferential program that the government has organized with HR, and HR people are talking to the graduating class. We are going to have a list of positions that could be matched up with them.
So, Mr. Speaker, I want to state for the record for the people out there and the graduates and nursing students in the classroom, that we are committed to working with them to make sure that we do everything we can to find them employment and that we will be providing them with the information. The fact that the jobs are not being posted should not be a distraction. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Ms. Lee. The honourable Member for Nahendeh, Mr. Menicoche.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to ask the Minister of Education some questions on the Member’s statement I provided earlier today on the students of Wrigley on the concerns of their parents about not accessing proper education for their children in Fort Simpson.
The issue is, Mr. Speaker, there is a residence in Fort Simpson that is exactly designed for out-of-town students but, for whatever reason, they’re not able to attend there. There’s no option to provide education to our small, remote communities if we do not access that residence. There must be alternate solutions. So I’d like to ask the Minister what can be done about this situation. Mahsi cho.
Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. The honourable Minister responsible for Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Lafferty.
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Obviously there’s a reason why these students are not in a residence and we need to get that confirmation from the DEA or DEC, probably the DEA. I will be following up on this particular matter with the DEA. There are various options. The students and the parents in the community can work with the DEA, if they can meet with the local DEA and erase those concerns. We will do our part as well.
When I spoke with the parents and the members of the DEA in Wrigley, they asked that... It’s a long way to travel. The DEA and the Dehcho Divisional Education Council have the resources for them to come to Wrigley, meet with the parents and discuss some of the solutions and issues around their children not being able to attend school in Fort Simpson. As I indicated in my Member’s statement, we have an obligation for Aboriginal education and we must find solutions no matter how tough they are.
Obviously there is a solution we need to find within the system. This is an area we need to work closely with the district education authority on. We allocate funding based on the operations and maintenance of the school board and they work closely with the students and the parents in identifying where issues arise. We need to find out the situation that the Member is referring to. What is the real issue? Why aren’t the students in their residence? I’m sure there’s a reason. We need to find that reason. As the Member alluded, there’s a solution to this, so let’s work on that.
I’m pleased that the Minister and I are of the same mind. I think if we take it one step further, of course the Dehcho Divisional Education Council must meet with the parents in Wrigley, sit them all down in the same place and find out some of the issues. I think the next step is to also get an independent evaluation of the residence system that’s there to see how it can better fit for the smaller communities and students in the post-secondary education from the smaller communities. I’d like to ask the Minister if we could work towards that for the time being.
I will work with the DEA on having those Wrigley students attend Simpson with regard to the residence. Also the independent evaluation would have to come from the DEA if they wish to do that.
We as a department will work closely with them. Maybe this is a concern that we can bring forward to the DEA. The Member raised that issue. It’s a concern to the Member and to the community. We’ll follow through with that.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Final supplementary, Mr. Menicoche.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. The first step I always believe is communication. I’m glad the Minister is willing to work towards that and work with the Dehcho Divisional Education Council. I would also ask the Minister to bear in mind that other communities are having the same issue, like Nahanni Butte, Trout Lake and Jean Marie River. Please bear in mind and ask them to get involved at some point. It’s an issue that concerns all the small, remote communities in my riding.
I agree with the Member. It is across the board in the Northwest Territories, not just in Nahendeh. It is in Beaufort-Delta and other places. This is an area that has been brought to our attention and we are working within our department and the DECs and DEAs.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. The honourable Member for Great Slave, Mr. Abernethy.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are for the Minister of Health and Social Services and relate to the response that the Minister released on Monday on the Standing Committee on Social Programs Report on the Child and Family Services Act.
The recommendations within the report needed to be considered in the context of the entire report. There was a lot of information in the report that helped us form the recommendations we had.
Unfortunately, when I’m reading through the responses and the information and action items, I don’t always get the sense or feel that the context of the report was considered. It seems to be more specific responses to the recommendations out of context in some cases.
Having said that, the responses and the information and information action items seem pretty vague to me. There’s not a lot of information there. I’m assuming that there must be some greater level of analysis. I was wondering if that analysis exists for each of the recommendations, and if it does, can the Minister share it with us so we have a better understanding of how they came to their conclusions and the recommendations they came up with.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. The honourable Minister responsible for Health and Social Services, Ms. Lee.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The government’s response lays out our response where we say that we have accepted 22 recommendations and on the whole we’ve accepted 61 out of 73 recommendations. In reading those recommendations, we have explained what our responses are. We have made the effort to include as much information as possible. I understand and I am encouraged by the Member’s statement earlier and other Members saying that we have a good start. They like some of the things that we have said. They are happy with the fact that we have accepted so many of those recommendations. I understand that they would like to work on some more of them. I’d be willing to sit down with the committee and go over some of the details if the Members or committee would like to do that.
I would have thought given that these responses and the information and action items, if you actually read through them, they do seem vague. They’re not always clear. I’ll just give you a real quick example.
We asked the government to mandate prevention and early intervention and include a presumption of prevention and early intervention in the principles of the act. They responded by saying the presumption of prevention and early intervention is implicit. This is what I talked about in my Member’s statement. We read the act. We’ve identified the sections that they’ve identified in their response. We also felt it was implicit. But it’s not being done in the communities. It’s not happening on the ground. What we’re looking for is explicit action. If we make it explicit in the act, then it will happen.
Going to the Minister’s agreement or commitment to meet with us, I understand that they’re also developing a strategic plan. It’s identified in this. My question to the Minister is: will she commit to meeting with us and sitting down with us and going through each of the recommendations and the suggested responses to find some common ground so that both sides understand what is going on here? We know what we expected. We don’t fully understand the recommendations, but I’m not sure they fully understood our recommendations. I’d like to sit down with the Minister and have a meeting going through point by point. Will the Minister commit to doing that prior to developing a strategic plan?
I’ve already agreed to do that on many occasions and I’d be happy to meet with Members and the committee. The example that the Member presented here is a good example. I want to state that the department and government took every recommendation very, very seriously. We approached it in a very positive way. Our responses are about how do we make this happen. The Member raised a question about the way the law is right is it’s implicit. We would like to make it explicit. The example he gave is under section 7 of the act. It already states very explicitly that child protection has to, it must, it shall consider cultural implications. It must. It’s as explicit as we can get.
I think there’s a philosophical debate about how much force and power do you put into legislation. Our government’s position is we understand what the committee is saying. We agree with what you’re saying. We were there when the committee met with the people. We’re suggesting different ways in which we can do that. Legislating and making it explicit in legislation is only one way. But you know, laws can only go so far. I think what they’re asking us to do is do things differently. Our suggestion is that we can do that.
I’m encouraged by what the Member said. We have a common ground. We want to work together. We should look at the report as water being half full rather than being half empty. I think there’s a lot of ground for us to move on. I think we may have a difference of opinion about whether we should do it by mandated legislation or by policy change or attitude change, but I am definitely willing and prepared to work with the committee and Members.
Thank you, Ms. Lee. Final supplementary, Mr. Abernethy.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. For just a point of clarity, this question, this example that I gave was about prevention and promotion. The response that she gave me when she quoted section 7, if you actually look at their response, their response only refers to sections 2, 5 and 6 and there’s no reference to section 7. I think she’s talking about a completely different area than I am.
The other thing I want to point out with respect to that example is after they say it’s implicit in the act, they also go further to say basically no amendment is required so no action is required. So they’re not planning on actually doing anything. This is the problem. Implicit is fine if it’s being acted on. Unfortunately, a lot of these things are not being acted on which is why it needs to be explicit.
Going back to the other part about the commitment to meet with us, great, fantastic, thanks. We hope, and I was wondering if I could get the Minister to commit to having the strategic plan done before the life of this government comes to an end.
The section 7 I believe is the interpretation clause which helps us within the legislation to interpret the other clauses. Anyway, we could have this discussion.
The other example that the Member mentioned, it is true. I just want to make sure that I put it on record and that I just want to express to the Members again, which is what we spoke about yesterday, yes, I would like to work with the committee. I am committed to work with the committee. We need to find a common ground. We have to work it on the basis of mutual respect and understanding. I need the committee to know that we are approaching this in a very proactive, positive way.
When the committee suggests that a legislation should be amended to get to the result that they would like, I need the committee to entertain possible options of other options as well. Amendment and legislation and law making is just one option. It’s a very blunt tool and there are other things that we should be able to consider. I just wanted to confirm again.
The strategic plan, yes, we hope to get that done within the life of this Assembly and we will work with the committee to get that done.
Thank you, Ms. Lee. Final supplementary, Mr. Abernethy.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Just for the record, I believe the committee does have an open mind but we do want to see action. A lot of it is back-and-forth debate on points. It’s not really adding much value and it’s not really helping the people of the Northwest Territories, from my point of view and from her point of view. No question.
May I remind Member’s this is not time for...
---Interjection
The honourable Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to follow up on my Member’s statement on mental health issues and pose questions to the Minister of Health and Social Services.
My first question deals with patients being released from the Stanton Territorial Hospital’s mental health unit. Mental health unit staff sometimes make it a condition of release that the released patient stay at the Centre for Northern Families, presuming that there are skills and capacity at the CNF to meet the special needs of mental health outpatients. Yet the Centre for Northern Families has only hard-won experience with these people and some space, whereas trained staff, and especially funding, are needed to provide full care.
Can the Minister tell me why our health facilities would place such a condition of release, knowing full well the required capacity doesn’t exist?
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The honourable Minister responsible for Health and Social Services, Ms. Lee.
