Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Lafferty.
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. I agree with the Member that we need to have the staff up to speed on all the processing and issuing of the cheques on time. That is one of our priorities. This has been brought to my attention when Member Bisaro first asked those questions. I then followed up with my department. There have been some challenges, but at the same time, I have instructed my department that we need to make this a priority. If we have a shortage of staff, whether it be on leave, we need to have a dedicated individual in the system who can follow up on all requests.
I did commit to this House already that this is a matter that we’re following through with, and also, again, reiterating that there is client service training that is going to be happening at the end of this month and the beginning of next month to establish more of a positive step forward. That’s what we’re looking forward to with all the client service officers.
Thanks to the Minister for those comments. We certainly do need redundancy here in order to avoid this sort of situation. I just want to explore further the issue of backup for emergencies. The Minister’s 2010 answers to me promised a change in process and more staff training. Ms. Bisaro was told last week that there will be client service officer training, and the Minister has confirmed that. Because this is a financial payment function, and because the need for prompt payments is absolutely critical, will the Minister ensure that not only client service officers but an emergency backup in the finance area will be able to make these payments no matter what?
We do try to avoid, as much as we can, on the delay of payments to those clients. We understand that the power bill, the utility bills and other food sources, that is our priority, to issue those cheques on time. But there are times when we are challenged with providing documentation and so forth.
Again, as I indicated, we are going to have a dedicated individual that deals with those matters. The requests that come in, I specifically instructed, after the question was raised in the House, that this is an urgent matter. We need to deal with it especially now that winter is here. It is a priority for my Department of ECE. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, thanks again to the Minister for that response. My understanding is that the client service officers put in the order for the cheque and then the financial people issue the cheque. That is what I was referring to. I assume that the Minister has that well in hand and will ensure both steps are taken in a timely fashion.
When these payments are late they cause ripple effects. People incur late fees for things such as phone and electricity. These are people for whom a five or 10 dollar additional charge is equivalent to a day’s groceries for a family. Unfortunately, current income support policy does not provide for the reimbursement of these penalties resulting from ECE’s tardiness.
I am assuming this isn’t going to happen again, but if it does, our records show that clearly when ECE payments have been made late, in cases where clients have been paid late, will ECE reimburse the cost of penalties that have resulted from payments received belatedly? Thank you.
That is correct; we are going to avoid late payments. Those late payments in the past, again, it all depends on the case-by-case basis. It could be missing documents. It is a shared responsibility between clients and our department, the client service officers. The information I gather and also the training that is going to be happening at the end of the month is specifically to deal with the backlog, the satisfaction survey that has been conducted in the past, how client service officers deal with those clientele in a professional and positive manner. The process itself from issuing of the cheque through the Finance department, we need to expedite the process, especially during the winter months. That is the commitment I made within my department, gave the instruction to my department. We will follow through with that. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. The honourable Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are addressed to the Minister of Health and Social Services. I want to follow up on my statement and talk a bit about the Territorial Respite Care Plan, which apparently is ready to go.
I would like to ask the Minister, first of all, if he would give me, and give the House and the public, an update on the Territorial Respite Care Plan, where it is at. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The honourable Minister of Health and Social Services, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The full expansion of the Territorial Respite Program outside of Yellowknife and into the communities that don’t have any respite services is going to be between $2 million and $3 million. Our Department of Health and Social Services is working with the Department of Finance to assess competing financial pressures and so on in order to look at the expansion, but we do have some services operational and running in small communities outside of Yellowknife too. Thank you.
Thanks to the Minister. I know that there are some respite care programs outside of Yellowknife. There are three communities which have respite care for some of their residents there, but as I mentioned in my statement, there is an overwhelming need for respite care in the other 29 communities that aren’t yet served by any kind of respite care. I would like to know from the Minister when is the department going to recognize… I think they recognize that there is a need, but when are they going to recognize it as an overwhelming need? When are they going to start providing services in our other 29 communities? Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, the department recognizes that there is a need already. We have respite programs in Yellowknife, Detah, Fort Good Hope, Colville Lake, Fort McPherson, Simpson, Inuvik, Aklavik, Behchoko, Fort Smith and Hay River. Those are the communities, and for other communities which I have not mentioned, respite services can be made available through home care. Each of the communities that have home care, we can arrange for respite services if the need was there and we work with the authorities to provide that need through home care. Thank you.
I thank the Minister. I don’t think I heard of this opportunity for families to access respite care through home care.
Can the Minister provide a bit better explanation to me and to people listening? What would a family get by applying through home care? What kind of service is provided through home care for respite? Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, it would be a standard respite service for individuals that need respite from caring for individuals that need constant care, where the request would go back through the authorities, whether it would be local or regional through the Health and Social Services Authority and asking the home care to do respite care for individuals in a similar line of what is being offered in respite care programs in Yellowknife and other communities where respite care is being offered. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. That sounds like a fairly bureaucratic process and rather long and involved to simply get a family some assistance to deal with the stress that they are under from day to day.
Is this a dedicated person who is providing respite through home care? If not, when are we going to get dedicated personnel in our communities to assist families with the respite care they need? Thank you.
No, it is not a dedicated individual in those communities where we don’t offer the program, but rather, we would work with home care workers that are in the communities to provide that service based on requests and based on demand. When we will expand the program would be once we are able to make a business case back through the business planning process to expand the Respite Program. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The honourable Member for Nahendeh, Mr. Menicoche.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Earlier today I spoke about the situation in Trout Lake where people can’t see the visiting doctor unless they have an appointment. As we are learning, this is not the only community that this is happening in.
Is the Minister willing to review the practice of turning away small community residents who do not have prior appointments with this visiting physician? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. The honourable Minister of Health and Social Services, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, I would be willing to have the authorities review that. The reason that we have the system that we do where the health authorities are at the regional level and work closely with the communities, so that they understand the communities, the culture of the communities and so on. If this is happening, it shouldn’t be happening. Individuals will not be turned away from seeing the doctor if there are appointments available. Of course, when you have more than one individual showing up at the same time slot, it would be difficult, but we will do our best to allocate the time slots for individuals that come in to drop in to see the doctor when the doctors are in the communities. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
That is part of the issue. The doctors are flying in and flying out and sometimes, if there is a weather system moving in, they are leaving early. I believe that they can expand their time in the community. In fact, communities welcome doctors overnighting.
Can the Minister review that and see if there is a possibility of doctors overnighting and doing a good visit through the communities? After all, they are only going there every six weeks. Thank you.
We will have the department work to see those various health authorities and ensure that if doctors are needed overnight, if they have more than just one day worth of appointments when they go into a place like Nahanni Butte, Trout Lake or any of those small communities that have too many appointments for one day. I’m not expecting that the doctor would leave a community – I’m sure the community can accommodate the doctor overnight – and will ensure that doctors that go into the community are prepared to stay overnight. Thank you.
Thank you very much. I think part of the issue, too, is that if the flight returns at 4:30, doctors are packing up and leaving at 4:30. They have to have the flexibility and understand the needs of the community and to stay that extra couple hours or whatever it takes. Thank you.
I agree with that. As I indicated, we will contact the authorities and if doctors need to stay overnight in the small communities, they should. They’ve signed up to work in the small authorities, like the Deh Cho Health and Social Services Authority, they should expect to overnight in the small communities as well. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Menicoche.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I think the point is to plan to stay overnight and not just say the workload is so much here, we have to overnight and that. Also, it’s about improving access to the patients’ files. I can understand it if they’re going to see a patient and they don’t have the proper files from the regional headquarters, but spending an extra night gives the opportunity to fax, phone, or hopefully our electronic medical records get up on-line so they can actually request that it be e-mailed. Thank you.
Thank you. We would look at a planned overnight. If a doctor is going into the communities, they can look at the historical appointments in certain communities and if this has become an issue where patients are being turned away from the health centre, but the doctor still leaves on schedule even though they haven’t seen all the patients and that’s the history of that community, then in the future, when doctors go into small communities, they would plan to stay overnight.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. On March 12, 2009, I challenged the department and the Minister of ECE to review the SFA in terms of years of eligibility. I said that I believed that the program of our southern neighbour in Alberta was stronger than ours. I challenged the Minister to see if he would do a general overview and come back with what he found out. I also challenged him to see if he could strengthen the SFA in terms of six years of eligibility. The Minister said, “Certainly we can provide more research with our neighbouring Alberta. We need to find out if it is all grants, because I am sure there is a loans portfolio as well.”
I’d like to ask the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment when he is going to report on his findings.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Lafferty.
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. When the question was first raised in this House, I did respond to the Member’s question, reflecting on our program comparable to other jurisdictions such as Alberta. At that time I did state that we have the best program to subsidize students in the Northwest Territories, comparable to the information that we had at that time. With that, I did commit to this House that we were looking at an overall review of the SFA program and I’m glad to say that we have done that.
The review is before us and I’m going to be tabling that document today, and it does reflect on what we’ve initiated so far. I believe there are two or three key topics of recommendations that we’ve followed up already. What the Member is referring to is also part of the recommendations as a long-term strategy to work towards. So I need to work with standing committee on which are the priority areas and how we can move forward together. So that’s what I’ll be working towards with the standing committee. Mahsi.
I’m not advocating that we take anything away from our students, but this government has been providing non-Aboriginal students with six years of forgivable loans on the backs of the Aboriginal students.
Mahsi. Again, that information will be before this House as a public document, and as we move forward, those are recommendations to me, as the Minister responsible for Education, Culture and Employment, on Student Financial Assistance. So in order to start implementing those, we need to find the funds, and I need to work with the standing committee to find those funds and which are the priority areas. So I am committing to working with the Members across the floor to highlight and identify which of the recommendations we should be going after first, second or third and so forth over a short-term and long-term strategy. That’s the commitment I’ve made. Mahsi.
Thank you. Is the Minister aware that in Alberta people from the Northwest Territories with Indian status are eligible under the post-secondary funding program and that they are eligible for grants for an undergraduate degree, a master’s degree and a PhD degree for a combined maximum of 80 months, or eight years of financing? I repeat, this is eight years of grants, not loans.
Would the Minister see this as an opportunity for us to improve our education funding for students under grants?
Mahsi. We did look into Alberta and southern jurisdictions, their student financial assistance. Again, our program is much better than what they provide. I’ll give you an example.
As I stated on March 12, 2009, the limitation of $50,000 for a loan limit in other jurisdictions. Ours was $47,000. We increased it to $60,000 so at least we can service a master’s student. So we are improving our program every time and, again, with the recommendations that were brought to my attention from the general public, from the students, from the parents and also from Regular Members, we will be following through with those recommendations on a long-term basis. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Yakeleya.
I challenge the Minister to come back next session with a plan for changes to the Student Financial Assistance program that adds another level of funding so that Aboriginal students can get the funds to obtain a master’s and a PhD degree. Will the Minister commit to that?
Mahsi. What I can commit to in this House is that I will be working with the standing committee to identify, as we move forward on the business planning process, which areas we need to highlight as a priority for this government. Also for the Regular Members, I want to share their perspective, because we have 18 recommendations. Unfortunately, we can’t implement them all next year or the following year, but we can at least capture two or three that we can move forward on. So I’m committed to doing that. I’ll be working closely with standing committee on a move forward basis. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. The Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to continue today with my questions to focusing on my Member’s statement, which was the concerns regarding the caribou surveys and their numbers.
The Minister of Environment and Natural Resources provided a statement and he talked about the numbers; three out of the four groups were increasing, one is decreasing, as well as he showed clearly that two groups we were unable to fully survey to get a sense. He did highlight that there was a problem. I’d like to say he skipped over predation pretty quickly in one of his statements on trying to focus as a solution, as well as we all know the impacts on the First Nations, residents and outfitter hunting.
So what brings me to my question is with all this discussion and concern built around the numbers, what are the target numbers that the Department of Environment and Natural Resources is working towards that is clear and transparent so that everyone can fully appreciate and understand what we’re working towards and trying to achieve before normalized hunting can return? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The Minister of Environment and Natural Resources, Mr. Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. That process is now going to be underway. We’ve stabilized the fall. The numbers went from almost 500,000 in the 1980s down to 32. There has been a modest recovery from that point within our margin for error. The co-management boards, and all the biologists, and all the people on the boards will be looking at that management plan. The Wek’eezhii board plan is good for another year, which we have signed off on and agreed with. Their job, in terms of the Bathurst, is to review that and they will determine based on the science, the numbers, the feedback from the traditional knowledge and the communities as well, recognizing that there’s more than just the basic numbers. We talked about cow/calf recruitment, the herd, and the health of the females, and those types of things. It’s a complicated issue and they have to look at all those variables.
I can’t disagree with the Minister when he says it’s more than just about the basic numbers. I would like to know what positive effects, other than just banning caribou hunting, the department has proposed. What I mean by that is, has the Minister, or working with the boards or co-management partners, have they proposed anything such as hunting more wolves, any type of activities that will help increase the population? To be frank, waiting for the caribou to repopulate themselves to their old numbers may take a generation of our lifetime, not the caribou’s lifetime.
If we look at the Bluenose-East, the numbers went from 60 to roughly, our best estimate based on the information we do have in terms of cow/calf recruitment and such, to we think up to 100,000 in a relatively short period of time. The Bathurst, one of the biggest impacts was, of course, the harvest. It’s one of the most heavily populated areas of the Northwest Territories. It was a herd that was used by all the folks around Yellowknife, all the folks in the South Slave, some from Deh Cho. In addition to that, there were clearly some issues with warming temperatures and such that were affecting travel. Some concerns were there about possible impacts of winter roads and such. Overall, the issue of wolves is not one that is seen as a major factor where we would want to go in and start doing a wolf cull, if that is what the Member is suggesting.
Well, first I should be clear that I’m not suggesting anything, because I’m not a wildlife biologist. All I can suggest is, I’ve heard from other people who make suggestions of that type of manner, that is the right choice. I will leave it up to the biologists to make that determination. I again ask the question of what stopped us from putting numbers on the table to this point of saying when we reach a certain number, whether it’s 35,000 for the Bathurst or, for example, maybe 2,500 for the Cape Bathurst, then we can open up to residents and outfitters, as well as return to traditional hunting levels for Aboriginal people.
What has stopped us from getting to that type of number and description, as well as full transparency on this process? As I’ve said repeatedly, if nobody knows what they’re working towards, nobody knows what the government’s doing on this particular issue and they assume it’s nothing. They will never get to hunt again.
