Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Mr. Dolynny.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I, too, rise again today to pay homage to what we heard today about a very talented and world-renowned speed skater. Before she was world renowned in speed skating she was an incredible swimmer for the Yellowknife Polar Bear Swim Club and she did her coach very proud. Congratulations, Cynthia.
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. I’d like to thank and welcome all visitors here in the public gallery today. Thank you for taking an interest in our proceedings today.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. On March 5, 2013, Sister Celeste of Tulita was honoured with the 2013 Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal. She is truly an inspirational woman whose impact on families in the community of Tulita cannot be understated. She established the Fort Norman Child Development Centre in 1981 and in the 31 years since it has been open, she has given several generations of Dene and Metis community members a head start towards successful personal and working lives. A growing number of her former students are finishing up their high school and pursuing further education, and showing leadership roles in the community.
In 1995 the Child Development Centre was renamed after Sister Celeste, demonstrating the community’s appreciation for her many contributions. She is especially loved for her deep respect and appreciation of the Dene and Metis cultures, skills and language, ensuring they are taught in the classrooms.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In my Member’s statement I talked about what’s next after devolution. This morning on the radio station I was listening to the chairperson from the Sahtu Secretariat, Ethel Blondin-Andrew, talking about the next steps in the progression of becoming a province that will have its own rights and meanings of being a part of the Confederation of Canada. She talked about a constitution in five to 10 years. I wanted to ask the Premier if that is the progressional steps we take in the evolution of becoming a province. We’re just about there, but we’re not quite there. We just don’t have that name. We have the powers now that we have negotiated them. Is that something that within this Assembly we would talk about and then move it to the next Assembly in regard to the Northwest Territories looking at provincehood?
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The honourable Premier, Mr. McLeod.
I’m a very practical and pragmatic person, so before we start talking about a constitution, we need to get devolution done first.
That’s all fine. That’s what we do here through our budgets and that. I’m asking about the leader here, looking forward to the Northwest Territories. I think as leaders around here, we are to inspire people to look at what’s ahead. I have a son who is 11 years old and it’s something he would look forward to and look at. Is that something they can look at and say, yes, one day, in five or 10 years? Is that something that the Northwest Territories can look at to be part of the Confederation of Canada through the means of constitution?
We already, as the Northwest Territories, are part of Confederation. I think, if I can put words in the Member’s mouth, he’s talking about becoming a province. We have looked at it. Right now the last time we examined it, our revenues would decline significantly. We would get approximately two-thirds less than what we’re getting now if we became a province, plus we’d have to face a hurdle whereby we would have to obtain at least 50 percent of the five most populated provinces to agree that the Northwest Territories should become a province. Those are the realities that we have to deal with.
In the North and in Canada, we are always changing and so we’ve got to look forward. I think we need to look at a new level of provincehood or the way the Constitution is, but the way it looks now, it doesn’t look in our favour. However, I’m not too sure if Canada and the Canadian people will say, let’s not give the right to the Northwest Territories people then. We can do things differently. We certainly passed the hurdle of the devolution. It’s still in its draft stages. I have hope and I have hope for my people. I believe in our people. We can do this. I want to ask the Premier, is that something that maybe by the end of the life of this government that will be some of the things that we need to talk about becoming a province.
Right now I’m focused on getting the final devolution deal done to have implementation. But I have spoken to a significant number of media and every one of them asks about becoming a province. Obviously, the Northwest Territories is the only jurisdiction in Canada that has a declining population. If we went to become a province, we’re going to have to turn that around. I look at Alberta. When Alberta became a province in the 1930s, they had a population of about 100,000. I expect that with all the potential for development and the tremendous resource potential, the road that we’re going to build to Tuk, I foresee that within the next decade we could very easily exceed 100,000 people. I think at that point we’d be in a very good situation to make the case to become a province.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We can use the scenario that the Northwest Territories is the birthplace of ice hockey in Canada. We’ve given birth to other provinces in the Northwest Territories. We have to remember that the Northwest Territories could become the next economic boom in Canada with the Norman Wells, and the road to Tuk and the mining. It could be a possibility that the people in Canada can say, yes. We’ve got our work cut out for us, but I think that’s something that we need to give to our people in the North. Devolution, fine. We’ll do the work, but we need to take the next step and call ourselves for what it is and call ourselves a province that belongs in the Confederation, not an administrative extension arm of the federal government as we have it now.
I think, in the longer term, we can aspire to that, but right now we’re going to get the devolution deal done and we’re going to implement devolution. We have a good midwife; we can start moving on to provincehood.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The Member for Inuvik Boot Lake, Mr. Moses.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I have questions for the Minister of Health and Social Services. I appreciate the response to my written questions. It is actually related to alcohol and drug-related emergency hospital and health centre visits. There are a lot of things in there that were brought to my attention; however, he only responded in terms of giving me stats for the Stanton Territorial Health Authority. In the written question, I asked for information from the health centres in the communities.
I guess my first question is: How is the department working on getting information and reporting with the health centres in the small communities so that here, as a territorial government, we can make territorial decisions with all the information from the small communities and the health centres? How is he getting the reporting from these small communities to help us make the decisions in this House?
Thank you, Mr. Moses. The Minister of Health and Social Services, Mr. Beaulieu.
Mahsi cho, Mr. Speaker. Currently, the system relies on a Community Health Management Information System. This is where all of the visits, whether they be mental health or other health visits, are recorded and then provided to the department and, actually, it’s manually entered at this time. This is one of the things that we are trying to address through the introduction of the electronic medical record. But at this time they are entered and, admittedly, we are quite a ways behind on entering all the data, but we are getting caught up in some of the regions.
In the written responses that I had received there was a section here that patients had left against medical advice. I was wondering what the protocol was for the department when a patient leaves against medical advice and ended up at the emergency ward. What protocol does the department take or gives direction to for these patients that leave the emergency rooms?
Patients that leave the health centre that are there voluntarily, regardless of what the problem may be, are not necessarily contravening the Health Act. However, there are patients that are there involuntarily and in that case the physician can fill out a form that will detain the patient for up to two weeks. During that two-week period, if the patient chooses to leave the hospital or the health centre on their own, then the physician can ask for a peace officer to return the patient. There’s also a provision within that system, in that form or that certificate, involuntary admission, to extend the two-week period.
The Minister was referring to the Mental Health Act. It’s involuntary patients that leave against medical advice. Under Section 9, subsections 6, 7 and 8, which is an order for psychiatric assessment, direction of order to peace officers, and the authority of order, have these sections under the Mental Health Act ever been practiced in the Northwest Territories where somebody who left the hospital was actually picked up by a peace officer and taken back to the emergency ward, and given the proper psychiatric assessment that they needed? That’s what I’m trying to get to, because I’m seeing the stats here and they are not very good stats to be seeing.
I don’t have the specific stats on how many patients may have been returned by a peace officer to the hospital, but there is a provision in there that if a person is there under the certificate of involuntary admission and they choose to leave the hospital, then the physician can have them returned by a peace officer, RCMP, whatever. But I don’t know how many times that has occurred over the past year or over the past history.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Moses.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker, I’m glad the Minister said that. It gives us an opportunity to start recording that type of data so we can know whether our government is doing a good job or not.
The main thing that I’m trying to do here is to do some education, some awareness within the department and in the health service sector in the emergency rooms. I want to ask the Minister, what is he going to be doing with this information that I’ve received and what he’s mentioned. How is this information going to get disseminated within the department, working with other groups like the Department of Justice, so that we can start making the changes and creating policies so that we can start making change for the people that need it?
The current system allows for the health authorities to request training, and the department works with the trainers and so on to train people on the Mental Health Act. But at the same time, the same statistics that we provided to the Member, there are many incidences across the territory that would require some special attention. I will take it back to the department to ensure that the staff is fully up to speed on the Mental Health Act right across our system. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Member for Hay River South, Mrs. Groenewegen.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Now that we’ve been all nice and happy about devolution, now comes the hard questions.
Hay River. It’s a great place. It’s open for business. We have room in our schools, we have developed land of every kind of every classification. We have industrial, commercial, residential. We have businesses in Hay River that could take on a lot more business by increasing their overhead by $1. They have the staff, they have the infrastructure, they just need more business.
During this last budget session, we saw jobs come to Hay River, a few that were actually decentralized and a few that were actually new positions, and we’re very, very thankful for that. But going forward with 175 potential new federal jobs coming into the Northwest Territories, I need to understand what the process is for a community like Hay River to, I suppose, put in our bid to be considered for bigger things: departments, divisions, secretariats, agencies. We know we can accommodate headquarters for various activities in the Northwest Territories because we’re already doing it. The Power Corp, library services, Liquor Commission, to name a few.
I’d like to ask the Premier, whose responsibility does this fall under. Is this the program review office? Is it a committee of deputies? Is this the Cabinet themselves? How do we plug into how we’re going to stabilize and increase the viability of our communities outside the capital? Thank you.
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The honourable Premier, Mr. McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m very pleased this day has come, because now we can answer all the hard questions.
This is something that we’ve planned for. Obviously, I’ve said it many times in this Assembly, that decentralization is a priority for this government. There are already approximately 175 federal government positions that are located in the Northwest Territories, and there will be approximately the same amount of positions that will be transferred to the Northwest Territories. We’ve been working on our organizational design. We expect to have at least four new departments, and we have been waiting for the jobs and the job descriptions to be provided to us. When we finalize our organizational design, we will also identify where those positions will go. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, would the Premier concur that when we are setting up jobs or activities that are now conducted by the federal government and we are setting up for the Northwest Territories, that it may be simpler to hire people to where they are going, as opposed to trying to move people from where they’re already established and have their children schooled? Is this a window of opportunity now that when we are recruiting people, to have them actually go to where those jobs will be? Thank you.
We are a very effective and efficient government, and that is obviously our intention. It doesn’t make much sense to hire people to put them in one community and then make them move to another community. For that reason, we have been undertaking inventories of available housing, office space. Where it makes sense, we will do exactly that, we will hire people to move into certain communities. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
As Hay River’s motto goes, we are open for business. If you came to Hay River today, when the economy has been a little slow in the last few years, you probably wouldn’t see as much vacancy and things that have been built on speculation for that very reason. But as a part of that inventory, I’d like to ask the Premier, could the government also find a way to ascertain people in the community. We know that 75 percent of all growth within the business sector comes from existing businesses expanding. Could part of that inventory also include canvassing who would be willing to develop infrastructure to accommodate decentralization? Thank you.
We have already faced those types of situations where we’ve identified positions and we’ve wanted to put them in communities, and due to a lack of infrastructure, lack of housing, lack of office space, we couldn’t find any place to put them. So a lot of times we have to park people in other centres. I think that we expect that, on a number of occasions when we do devolution and transfer positions, we may have to park people in larger centres that have the capacity before we develop additional infrastructure in other centres. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final, short supplementary, Mrs. Groenewegen.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As the Premier knows, Hay River has a very long-established business community, the private sector. We have many multi-generational businesses in Hay River. I’m sure that if the government put out a call for expressions of interest well enough in advance of some of these moves being made, I can assure the Premier that he would get a very favourable response. The government would get a very favourable response to that, with some lead time. I’d like to ask the Premier if that’s an opportunity that could be employed by this government, to give people lead time to create the infrastructure that would accommodate growth in our community. Thank you.
That would be part of our planning process, and that’s something that we are actively looking at. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Member for Range Lake, Mr. Dolynny.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I rise today to follow up on my Member’s statement on the subject of the 911 emergency call centres. It is clearly agreed by all Members of the 17th Assembly that we support sustainable, vibrant and safe communities. Recently in this House, we’ve heard from the Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs that he was considering to plan some monies for the 2014-2015 budget for the opportunities to explore 911 implementation. Yet, in the same breath, he indicated MACA did not have much money. This does not give many Members in this House the assurance that this subject is truly going to see the light of day.
My questions today will be for the Premier, who is now wandering the halls of this Assembly, looking for a new project to tempt him now that devolution is well on its way. Would the Premier agree of the need for a 911 NWT-wide emergency central call centre? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. The honourable Premier, Mr. McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I thought my next task was to go out and find all the missing caribou, but I’ll take a detour and talk about 911. I agree that a 911 system would serve residents well in protecting and preserving public safety. As a government, we’ve been focusing on trying to build capacity in smaller communities, and to provide for some emergency and safety services.
I guess the question in my mind is if we do have a framework, if we do hire a call centre in Edmonton and we get a call from a small community calling Edmonton, how do we get a responder in a small centre if we don’t have the capacity there? I guess that’s the conundrum our government has been focusing on. But we do know that 911 will improve public safety. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, that’s good news. I’ll inform the caribou they’re safe for another week or so. I appreciate what I’m hearing from the Premier. I appreciate the fact that this government and our Assembly are focusing on capacity in our communities, and that is a good sign. The solution to what the Premier is indicating is the formalization of all our emergency action plans across the communities. That’s where the cipher is and I’m hoping it’s something we’ll work on collectively.
I know the Premier is well versed in the subject of the lack of 911 services in the NWT, but can the Premier reassure this House that his government, our government, will consider earmarking the appropriate money and resources for the initiation of a framework of 911 services in the 2014-2015 budget cycle? Thank you.
Thank you. I’ll work very closely with my colleague, the Minister of MACA, and we’ll see how well or how many action plans we’ve developed. If our action plans are developed to the extent whereby we can move to the next level and if committee concurs that this would be a priority, then we would seriously look at this framework that the Member is talking about. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. The Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.
