My next question along those lines, is on their business case. When can we expect this business case to go towards FMB and get some results?
We will have the business case completed by December 31, 2012.
My next question is along the lines of would this be implanted for the upcoming year starting April 1st of the year 2013-2014 financials.
If the business case is approved by the Financial Management Board, we’re hoping that the flexibility will be built into the funding by April 1st the following fiscal year, so April 1st during the 2013-2014 fiscal year is when we hope to have the flexibility built into the funding.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final supplementary, Mr. Bouchard.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m just wondering if the flexibility in this funding is the department’s solution for funding midwifery in the authorities, or do they actually have other plans for additional funding.
We’re not thinking about paying for midwifery by building flexibility into the physician funding. That would be presented to the Legislative Assembly as an increase to O and M when the Midwifery Program is ready to go ahead in Hay River.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The honourable Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to ask the Minister of Health and Social Services what the health centre’s policy is when a patient or client comes into the health centre and want to see a nurse. What is the policy? Is the nurse supposed to take them into the examination room and work with them or chase them away?
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The honourable Minister of Health and Social Services, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The clinical practice is to see the patient. If the patient has pain, then the practice is for the physician that is there – whether it be a nurse, nurse practitioner or doctor – to see the patient and examine the patient.
How is this policy being monitored or being enforced? When I was in Fort Good Hope, certainly, residents there had told me about this not being fully enforced. How is this policy being encouraged so that the people who go to the health centre know that the nurse is going to see them in the examination room, rather than to either give them some pills or tell them not to come back, or not to really look at the issues? How is this being monitored and enforced?
Our activities, when we’re dealing with patients of any location in the Northwest Territories, is to use the clinical guideline practices and that if an individual comes in, the nurse is obligated to give them an examination. If they determine that it’s something minor and they can give them some medication, then that may be a decision, but otherwise, they should be following the policy. It’s being monitored by our Health and Social Services department with the health and social services authorities across the North.
The patients that I spoke to have gone to the health centre. Is there someone in the front that has enough information to say you have the right to ask for an examination, other than the nurse looking at you saying don’t come back or here’s some aspirin, come back the next day or come back when the doctor is in the community, which could be six weeks to three months? Our people won’t ask. You have to tell them they have the right to be examined and get a second opinion, if possible, and not to be asked to take some pills and go home.
What kind of policy encourages our people in the small communities who speak Dene Kede, who speak a second language – English is their second language and Slavey is their first – that they have the right to be examined?
In our system we have quality assurances. If that is happening in the Sahtu or something that is happening outside of our clinical practice guidelines, then we will assure that individuals can go to quality assurance. We have people in each of the authorities and at the department that can be contacted. I can provide that information to the Members, or the Member specific to this question also.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final supplementary, Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Also, I have had indications where a mother went in with her child to get the child looked at because of a skin rash and that. The nurse didn’t really give the young child any type of medication and sent the child and mother home.
What assurances can the Minister give me here today that I can call the mother back and say go back to the health centre and the nurse will check the child over? How can we give this type of assurance to the people in Fort Good Hope that their health centre will look at the people no matter what, and then make the proper prescription of what type of medication they could be taking?
I know there is a standard of practice, like I have indicated earlier, for the health practitioners to see the patient. However, I’m sure that this happens. I’ll have the deputy minister contact the CEO from the health authority to ensure that is happening across the Sahtu.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The honourable Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. I want to follow up on some really distressing reports we’ve heard on CBC over the last couple of days about food not being on the table of our people across the North, and the failure of our food banks. Our people are, obviously, suffering here. If they didn’t have country food they would be starving. I would like to ask – recognizing that there are ripple effects through our families, education, health, so on – first of all, what is the situation from the Minister’s understanding? To what degree does this exist in the Northwest Territories?
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Lafferty.
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. What I can offer is the programs that we currently deliver into the communities, whether it be to the organizations. Part of the programs that we offer, of course, is income security. Within income security there are all different programs, as well, whether it be Productive Choices, individuals that can access the income security. We also offer other areas such as, again, through my department, the Labour Market Agreement. I know the Member is referring to specifically the food area, but we work closely with the Health and Social Services department, and also the Minister responsible for Homelessness on the actual funding that’s available. It is a joint task force that we try to deal with those matters.
We’ve heard over the radio, as well, on CBC. We are fully aware of it and we are dealing with that at the community-based level.
Thanks to the Minister for those remarks. Unfortunately, this Assembly is becoming known as one that studies problems rather than deals with them. I really hope that the Minister will take the lead in working with his colleagues in addressing the situation and committing… First of all, will he commit to finding out the extent of the problem and why our food banks are failing, and people do not have food on their table despite all the programs mentioned.
As I indicated, there are approximately three departments working on this particular project and we are aware of it. To the extent of the challenges, we need to work together in collaboration and identify solutions, because that’s where we’ve been focusing on as a department, and we will be informing the Members as we move forward on resolving this issue. That’s our prime mandate. As my Department of Education, Culture and Employment, we’ll do what we can with the programs in existence to offer a remedy to these situations.
Thanks for the remarks from the Minister. Again, we want to see action here and less studying. Surely, we must know something about why this is happening. Is it bad decisions? Are some people making bad decisions? If so, what are we doing about correcting those decisions? You know, bad decisions, I’m going to gamble this week with my income support and then starve later. That’s a bad decision. What are we doing to help people make better decisions, if that’s the case?
Again, we are providing the programming through ECE to the communities, to the organizations to deal with those challenges that we’re faced with. Again, interdepartmental, that we are working towards a solution towards this and we’ll continue to stress that. It is important to us and it’s one of our priorities. We will be reaching out to the communities that are most impacted.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thanks to the Minister for that commitment. We’ve refused programs to help feed our children in schools. We’ve refused milk subsidies and so on. We really need to get going. This is serious and has direct impacts on our children and our people. People are hungry. What will the Minister do in the short term? People are starving right now, or at least undernourished and so on, according to the reports. What will he do right away?
What I can do as Minister responsible is, again, work with the two Ministers, but at the same time, with our programming, as we speak, my department is doing the research within those communities that are impacted, the challenges that we’re faced with and what can we provide. If we need to improve in those areas, we’ll continue to do so in our programming. This is what I can provide to the Members, that my income department area will be going to those communities from a regional perspective and provide solutions to the challenges.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. The Member for Inuvik Boot Lake, Mr. Moses.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m going to follow up to my Member’s statement, in terms of stem cell donor campaigns and awareness. I want to ask the Minister of Health and Social Services if the Minister is familiar with this program, and if so, is his department currently doing any type of programs that are similar in the Northwest Territories that they’re doing in other jurisdictions throughout Canada?
Thank you, Mr. Moses. The Minister of Health and Social Services, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In March 2011, at the provincial/territorial/federal Ministers’ meetings, the Ministers announced that they would jointly put $48 million into stem cell research. The NWT is included in that research and will benefit from it as well.
I had asked the Minister about questions in terms of the awareness campaign. Up until last year when I went to the booth, I didn’t really know too much about it, and I did a lot of work in the health promotion area.
Once again, I’d like to ask the Minister if there are any programs that offer education and awareness in the Northwest Territories to the residents of the Northwest Territories that make them understand about the cheek swabs and getting into the database, and becoming a donor for the stem cell bone marrow transplant donor list.
Although you can donate anywhere in Canada, the NWT government does not specifically have a program dedicated to stem cell. However, we have advised the authorities and have shared information with the authorities, that should somebody in the authorities and within their various authorities across the Territories want to donate stem cells, then they have that ability to do so, and we provided that information. As far as an awareness campaign to the general public, we haven’t done anything on that at this time.
Obviously, there are organizations in the Northwest Territories who are giving this type of awareness campaign. Would the Minister and his department commit to supporting these organizations, finding out who these organizations are and supporting them either financially or through human resources to get this education out to people of the Northwest Territories, so that should one of our residents need this type of donor request, that it’s there for them? Will the Minister commit to offering that support?
Yes, we would commit to supporting and creating awareness with the organizations across the Territories working on trying to get the message out to people on stem cell research.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Moses.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In terms of one of the biggest, I guess, advocates for this type of research is the Canadian Blood Services out of Alberta. I’m asking for another commitment here from the Minister.
Would the Minister contact their office and get information about awareness campaigns, education materials, and look at developing a more comprehensive plan focused on partnership with the Canadian Blood Services to deliver this comprehensive plan to the residents of the Northwest Territories?
The bank is managed and established by the Canadian Blood Services. If we are going to proceed with any campaign or any programs, it would be working with the Canadian Blood Services.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The Member for Nahendeh, Mr. Menicoche.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to ask the Minister of Health and Social Services some questions on medical travel. Firstly, I just want to wish all Members of this House a boo-tiful day.
---Laughter
I have had constituents from Nahendeh contact me on the medical travel issue. The issue is about when they get here, they are here for a day trip. The flights from Nahendeh come here in the morning and they depart in the evening. Their appointments are usually in the morning, but for the four or five hours in the afternoon, the medical travel clients have nowhere to go, nowhere to wait. Do we have anything existing to help our clients of medical travel that are here in Yellowknife for the day? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. The honourable Minister of Health and Social Services, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I don’t believe that we have a day program for the patients that come here for medical and get their appointments and have a lot of time on their hands before the flight, but we would be pleased to work with medical travel people to see if something can be developed. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, sometimes they are housed here overnight and their appointment is in the morning, and then they still have to wait a long day as well. In fact, I had a resident actually ask the hotel for a half a day rate, but the hotels in Yellowknife don’t do that.
Is the Minister willing to talk with the Hotel Association in Yellowknife or something to allow half a day stays and somewhere they can relax? Often they are travelling with children or elders. They just have nowhere to go during the day. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, I have no issue with the medical travel people talking to the hotels to see if something like this can be established for our medical travel patients. Thank you.
