Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I certainly have seen the contributions of $1,000 going into the Sahtu communities to honour their volunteers. I know in the small communities, we know who the volunteers are who naturally show up and do things. Other ones don’t like to be recognized, but they will do their part in any type of event. For example, we had the hand games in Tulita with the young people, they had a lot of volunteers there. We had the Sahtu Cup in Norman Wells, a lot of volunteers in Norman Wells to host that.
I guess I wanted to see if there was a registered list of volunteers. People don’t really want to put their names on it, but just to show at the end of the year we have 600 or 700 volunteers in the Sahtu, or maybe more, just to show a number and show the importance of volunteers. I’m not too sure how far my request this morning will be pursued in the Department of MACA. Thank you.
We’ve heard from the volunteers who get the awards at award ceremonies that the last thing they want is to draw any attention to themselves. That’s what makes it a pretty special group because they don’t do it for the recognition is what they always say. They just like helping out their communities.
As far as an official list goes, I suppose during the end of the year, a couple of phone calls to each region saying how many people did you have volunteer instead of putting an official list together, just some numbers. I think they will be quite high. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Inuvik Boot Lake, Mr. Moses.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to ask some questions to the Minister of the Department of Health and Social Services today. It is with regard to some of our most vulnerable clientele who have low incomes and are probably not ready for when we send some of our residents down to out-of-jurisdiction treatment facilities. I’d like to ask the Minister, him personally as the Minister of Health and Social Services, is he familiar with the type of environment and atmosphere that our residents and people in care who get treatment, the physical environment, that our residents will be going into when we do send them down for treatment. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Moses. The honourable Minister of Health, Mr. Abernethy.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I did have the opportunity to travel with some members of committee to one of the facilities we have a contract with, Poundmaker’s in Alberta, just outside of Edmonton. I am familiar with that facility. The other three facilities that were contracted, too, I haven’t had an opportunity to visit or tour. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
The Minister hasn’t had that opportunity, so I’m assuming some of our physicians and counsellors probably didn’t have that opportunity as well. When we’re preparing our clients who are getting treatment for addictions counselling or some type of other issue, how does this government prepare our residents and our clients who are going down south for treatment for some of the things they might see? When you get into the cities, there are more hard-core addicts, there are people who have lived other lifestyles that don’t connect or relate to the type of life we live up here in the Northwest Territories.
How do we, as a government, prepare these residents when we don’t even know what we’re sending them down to? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
The professionals we have in our system who are working with our residents are aware, for the most part, of the types of services and programming that are offered in each of the different facilities in the South. They do share that information with the residents before they go off for treatment.
On a few other points, we do work with our residents before they go down to make sure they have follow-up appointments back in the North, so when they do come back we can work with them to customize after-care. So we do have discussions with them before they go down and we do help them understand the types of programming that is offered at the different facilities. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I do understand the process and appreciate that the government takes that step. However, some of these individuals might be from a small community and have never been to a city before and had those types of interactions.
Does the government have a division or one point of contact that can, on a regular basis or on a weekly basis, follow up with our clients down south to see how the program is going, how the individual is doing or if they are thinking of leaving, continue to encourage and support them to stay in the program? Obviously it is a lot of money and we do want to make sure they receive the proper care and treatment that they need, because of the lack of resources we have up here in the Northwest Territories.
Does the government have a point of contact to follow up with these individuals? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
One of the things that we do know is that every individual is different and every individual has different needs and expectations. That’s why one of the reasons we put in a variety of different treatment options for individuals from on-the land programs and hopefully we’ll be moving forward and have some success with mobile treatment options as well as facilities. The bottom line is supports will vary depending on the client’s individual needs and arrangement that have been made with that client prior to going down for treatment. So, individually we can have custom plans to have regular contact or, if it’s not necessary, more of a follow-up contact. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Moses.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In some cases, our clientele and residents can’t really take the type of treatment or the facility or even the clientele that they’re housed with.
In the worst-case scenario, if a person were to leave the residential treatment facility, does this government offer some type of support service to get them back home to their communities in a safe and timely manner?
Arrangements for travel are made through the medical travel Stanton office. The Stanton Territorial Hospital and the Department of Health and Social Services pays for travel and accommodation costs for when individuals are going out for treatment referred by the government. Currently, the medical travel office has put in place guidelines that denies travel assistance home when an individual leaves treatment early. If they complete their training they would be covered. This was only recently brought to the department’s attention, and I have directed the department to ensure that this guideline is changed immediately to ensure that return airfare is paid by the Department of Health and Social Services whether or not the client has successfully concluded their treatment. We have recognized the challenge and we have fixed it, and we will make sure that people are aware.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. The Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have some questions for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. I listened with interest to his statement yesterday about the impact of funding reallocation for junior kindergarten on the pupil-teacher ratio. I’d like to follow up with a few questions to the Minister.
There is some good stuff in here. There’s some bad stuff in the statement, but the statement suggests to me that it’s okay to financially penalize bigger schools to protect the funding of schools with less than 120 students. I understand that, but I also want to say that I don’t necessarily agree with the Minister on that, but I do want to say that I very much appreciate the recognition on the part of the Minister and the department that Yellowknife education authorities will suffer significantly with the proposed funding reductions.
I’d like to know from the Minister, in terms of his commitment to make sure that Yellowknife education authorities don’t go over 16 to 1, I’d like to ask the Minister, first off, when will that commitment kick in? Will it be in the first year of reduced funding, the second year or the third year when junior kindergarten is introduced?
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The Minister of Education, Mr. Lafferty.
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. When we’re rolling out the junior kindergarten, it’s for the whole Northwest Territories and the 33 communities that we service. There is phase one, phase two, phase three year approach, and obviously, Yellowknife will get the third year implementation of the junior kindergarten, so we’re making sure, and I made a commitment in the House yesterday, anything above and beyond the 16 to 1 level, that PTR level, my department will be subsidizing them. We’re going to be monitoring that, and it’s not only in Yellowknife, it’s all the educational authorities that could be on the verge of 16 to 1 in the later years. Those are areas that we’re going to be closely monitoring.
This is a great initiative from our department. We’re getting a lot of positive feedback and we need to move forward. That’s what we’ve been told by parents, and we are moving forward on this.
Thanks to the Minister. I do want to move forward, as well, but I don’t want to move forward at the expense of some education authorities. I appreciate that the department is monitoring, but I did ask the Minister when this commitment will start. If an education authority goes over the 16 to 1 PTR in the very first year that their funding is reduced, is that when the commitment kicks in?
The other part of this is I would like to know from the Minister if this commitment is ongoing, so once we get beyond the implementation of junior kindergarten and something changes so an education authority goes over the 16 to 1 PTR, is this commitment also going to kick in in the future?
This is an area that we have made a commitment to, that on average, none of the school boards will be over 16 to 1, on the average territorial. At the same time, those individual education authorities, as the Member indicated, year one, year two, year three, some will be just slightly over and those will be mitigated through the subsidy that I have highlighted.
The Member is also asking if it’s going to be on a continuous basis. When we roll out the junior kindergarten and start implementing that, then the funding will be based on their enrolment as well. The larger the student population, then they’ll be receiving additional funding, more funding from our department. At the territorial level, the 16 to 1 will be under, but we will continue to subsidize those individual school boards that may be over 16 to 1.
Thanks to the Minister for the clarification. I take from that that, yes, this is going to be ongoing. I still didn’t really hear when this commitment is going to start, but I think it’s going to start when the 16 to 1 is exceeded.
The Minister, in his statement, referred to pupil-teacher ratio for authorities, and in authorities that have a number of schools, pupil-teacher ratio can vary from school to school, so I’d like to ask the Minister, when they were deciding on this commitment to fund people beyond 16 to 1 ratio, did they consider evaluating pupil-teacher ratio by school? Did they determine the impact on each school not necessarily on the authority alone?
To my understanding, the information that we have received within my department working with the school boards on compiling all the information, we work closely with the school boards so we can access their information, as well, so they can share the information with us, so we can compare. If it’s based on per school or per educational authority, those are areas that the education authorities need to work with us. The information that we have we’ve compiled based on the projected enrolment. Phase one, phase two, year three approach is all projected on the student enrolment over a three-year period, so based on that the pupil-teacher ratio has been formula funded.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Final, short supplementary, Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I didn’t really hear an answer to my question, so I’d like to ask the Minister if he, with all this information that’s been compiled between the department and the education authorities, would he commit to providing to me and to other Members a school-by-school indication of pupil-teacher ratio as it stands now in each school in the territory?
I will commit to the Members that the information that we’ve compiled to date on the pupil-teacher ratio across the Northwest Territories will be shared with the Members.
Mr. Speaker, I wish to table the following two documents, entitled “Supplementary Estimates (Infrastructure Expenditures), No. 4, 2013-2014” and “Supplementary Estimates (Infrastructure Expenditures), No. 2, 2014-2015.”
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Pursuant to Section 5 of the Legislative Assembly and Executive Council Act, I wish to table the Summary of Members’ Absences for the Period of October 17, 2013, to February 4, 2014.
Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As per my earlier notice, I’d like to table Wise Words, Volume 4, Issue No. 2, January 2014.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Item 15, notices of motion. Item 16, notices of motion for first reading of bills. The honourable Premier, Mr. McLeod.
Mr. Speaker, I give notice that on Monday, February 24, 2014, I will move that Bill 11, Petroleum Resources Act, be read for the first time.
Mr. Speaker, I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Monfwi, that Bill 10, Northwest Territories Lands Act, be read for the first time. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Bill 10, Northwest Territories Lands Act, has had first reading.
---Carried
Item 19, second reading of bills. Item 20, consideration in Committee of the Whole of bills and other matters, with Mr. Dolynny in the chair.
I’d like to call Committee of the Whole to order. We have a number of items to consider: Bill 5, An Act to Amend the Motor Vehicles Act; Tabled Document 4-17(5) and Tabled Document 22-17(5). What is the wish of the committee today? Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. We wish to continue with Tabled Document 22-17(5), the Main Estimates for 2014-15, with the Department of Health and Social Services.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Is the committee agreed?
Agreed.
Thank you. We will commence after a short break.
I will call Committee of the Whole back to order. Yesterday when we left off, we were on the Department of Health and Social Services main estimates on page 8-9. At this time I’d like to ask the Minister of Health and Social Services if he’d like to bring the witnesses into the Chamber.
I would, Madam Chair.
Agreed?
