Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m just going to follow up with some questions on my Member’s statement earlier today about the Weaving Our Wisdom Gathering that’s actually going to be finishing up a little later on today. I registered online to get the live feed and it was great. It was really simple. The feed came up and I was able to just look at it for a bit.
I would like to ask the Minister if he has the number of individuals from across the Northwest Territories of how many people have logged on to that site, just to get an idea of how many people we’re actually reaching on this gathering. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Moses. Minister of Health, Mr. Abernethy.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We have issued 287 name tags at the gathering itself over the three days, and we have had the video link available to residents, and I’m glad the Member did have a chance to go online. I just want to take a second to applaud our staff who have thought really outside of the box on this one and have come up with an opportunity to ensure that everybody has an opportunity to hear these discussions and hear these presentations from these incredible speakers.
Unfortunately, at this time I don’t have those numbers because, frankly, we’re still in the middle of the conference, or the gathering, and we will be collecting that data as best we can. I think this is a huge opportunity for us to look at how we can do conferences of this nature in the future, and we will absolutely be sharing that information with the Member and the House. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Another thing that I did was I signed up for the archives. In a few days all these presentations will be put into an archive and be on the website, and that was a very simple task as well. So in a few days I’m going to get an e-mail saying that all the presentations, obviously because we’re sitting in meetings I was unable to attend, so I’ll be getting notified in a few days that presentations are up and running so I’ll be able to take a look into it.
Has the Minister done this type of video archiving with any other projects of this nature in terms of this videoconferencing?
This is the first time the Department of Health and Social Services has done this particular thing with respect to videoconferencing as well as the archiving. Once again, I have got to take this opportunity to applaud the staff for thinking outside the box and finding ways to make sure that all the information is available to all the residents of the Northwest Territories, and it is certainly something that we will explore and consider doing again. It’s something that, once we’ve had an opportunity to analyze this, other departments may also consider using this opportunity, this tool, in the future as well. Anything to get the information out there is a good thing, Mr. Speaker.
I know the Minister also travels and looks at best practices around the country. Would this be something that the Minister might be able to incorporate into looking at when he goes travelling to other countries, or even within Canada, and listens to presentations, that this is something that might be utilized based on the fact that they get buy-in from the organization to film a presentation and put it on our website? Is this something that he might look to explore to allow all Members who can’t go to those meetings to see what’s being talked about and addressed?
It’s certainly an interesting idea. I hadn’t thought of it previously, but it’s something worth consideration. I don’t personally travel to a lot of conferences. Most of my travels are here in the Northwest Territories, into communities. But I do have a number of staff who attend conferences around the country and sometimes internationally, and getting their presentations, and presentations they see could be quite valuable, assuming, as the Member said, we could get the legal rights to do so. But I’ll have the department look at that as well.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Moses.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Minister alluded to 287 name tags earlier, and if you put a travel tag, accommodations, per diems to 287 people, that’s a lot of money. I’m really curious about the amount of money that comes in, not the amount of money but the numbers we’re going to get for people who have logged on to this live webcast.
I’d like to ask the Minister, if there’s going to be a report, if he’s going to share with committee and look at how we can utilize these kind of presentations even more, through a live webcast, because you’re actually able to use real time and ask questions on the website. It’s going to prove to save a lot of money for this government. It’s really amazing.
Can I ask the Minister, when can Members look forward to seeing a report on this? I know the conference is still going on, but can I ask the Minister when we might see that?
I would like to use this opportunity to applaud and thank the Government of Canada, Health Canada, who actually has participated and been a partner in the delivery of this and has provided most of the funds to run this conference. I’d also like to take this opportunity to thank the NWTAC who helped us to coordinate this gathering, to make sure that representatives from all communities in the Northwest Territories were there. We’ve had a great team on this project that have come above and beyond to put it together, and of course, a final report will be prepared and produced once the conclusion of the gathering. I would imagine it would take a couple of months for us to pull together all the information and put it in a format that’s readable and useable. But absolutely, that document will be tabled in this House. It will be shared with Members and it will be online for everybody to see. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Mr. Bromley.
