Masi. Recognition of visitors in the gallery. Member for Sahtu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I, too, want to recognize Matthew Spence and Tracy St. Denis on their contributions to the North, in their private life, and their career, as well. Mahsi.
Masi. Recognition of visitors in the gallery. Member for Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh.
Marsi cho, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I would like to recognize a Page from Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh, April Sangris-Hardisty Beaulieu, and, also, I would like to take this opportunity to recognize our interpreters that are from Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh, Maro Sundberg and Tommy Unka. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Recognition of visitors in the gallery. If we missed anyone in the gallery, thanks for being here with us. It is always great to have an audience as part of our proceedings. Masi.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, in the past few sittings, I have had the opportunity to ask the Minister of Health and Social Services a number of questions about having the residents of Fort Liard and Nahanni Butte access to medical services via medical travel to Fort Nelson, BC. Can the Minister advise this House if the department has been able to make some movement on this issue? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Minister of Health and Social Services.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Absolutely. Staff from the Department of Health and Social Services did visit the community of Fort Liard, as well as Fort Nelson, to meet with residents of Fort Liard, but also staff of the health system in Fort Nelson, to discuss, first off, what services are actually provided in Nelson.
I think there has been some confusion over the years about what capacity Nelson has. They certainly aren't providing all of the services that are offered here in the Northwest Territories, the services that are required by residents of the Northwest Territories, but they certainly offer more than is being provided in Fort Liard. We did reach out to them. We had some discussions about some things that we might be able to do for our residents in Fort Liard, things like mammograms and other diagnostic tests that Fort Nelson may be able to provide for us.
We did meet with the MLA. Myself and staff from the department met with the MLA in September. We agreed to go to Fort Liard and Nahanni Butte to talk to the residents about what we have learned to help us formulate our next steps. We are hoping that we can put in some Memorandums of Agreement on some of those diagnostic tests, but also figure out how we might be able to provide some additional services or, rather, have our residents receive services from Fort Nelson in a way that still fits within the NWT Health and Social Services system.
We have made progress. We are not all the way there, but we are on the right path. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
The Minister has kind of answered a lot of my questions that I had here today, but that is great to hear. I am very happy to see that. That is a positive step, and I have to applaud the department and his staff for reaching out to Fort Nelson. We look forward to it.
The Minister talked about a couple of those -- mammograms and, I forget the other one, lab work, but also, with pregnancy, can the Minister explain or provide information if this opportunity is available as well?
There are services that aren't provided in Fort Nelson right now. I am actually not 100 percent sure about pregnancy, but my suggestion would be that having individuals come to the boarding home here in Yellowknife or to services here in Yellowknife or Hay River might be more appropriate. If there were any complications, we can deal with them within this existing system.
If somebody is receiving services in Nelson and there is a complication, they could end up going into the BC system where we wouldn't necessarily have access to health records or history of the individual, which could provide some additional complications. Given that we do bring people in quite a bit early, I am sure we can find ways to support those residents to come to northern locations where appropriate.
I thank the Minister for explaining and clarifying that because it is very important for residents to understand that not all services are going to be available, but some are, like he said, mammograms and lab services.
Can the Minister advise us when they could see potential opportunities for this service to be implemented, going to Fort Nelson?
Right now, residents from Liard and Nahanni can go to Fort Nelson, if that is where they choose to receive services. We do have reciprocal billing agreements with all provinces and territories in this country.
Our challenge, and I think the Member understands this, is that, when somebody uses their facilities without a referral in, they aren't necessarily covered for things like medical travel. There is also no ability to seamlessly share information where appropriate. What we are looking to do is actually fix that problem and find a way to refer people into Nelson so that they can take advantage of things like medical travel and so that our doctors in the North can work seamlessly with those doctors in Fort Nelson to make sure that our residents receive seamless care.
That work is underway right now. We are going to Liard and Nahanni in November. From there, we will figure out what our next steps are after we talk to the community about where we are and what we've learned, and then we will be engaging with Fort Nelson again.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Nahendeh.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate the Minister making the commitment to come in, in November, and he's worked with his staff. Can the Minister please advise this House, when he goes into the community, what's going to happen? What is the department going to present, and who is going to be coming in with him?
It is the Member's meeting. I am going with the Member. I anticipate he will be helping set up those meetings. We are bringing the staff who have been working and negotiating with Nelson so that they can explain our findings, help the communities, both of them, understand what services Nelson provides and what services Nelson does not provide. Once again, I think there is some belief that Nelson can do everything, and they are limited. There are certainly services they don't provide there. Then, talk about next steps, how we can work together with the community to make sure that those services that can be provided in Nelson are properly set up so that our residents can have more timely access to services.
By way of example, we know that they are providing mammogram services in the community. It's a much shorter drive for residents to drive there, to Nelson, for services as opposed to getting on a plane, flying to Simpson, getting on another plane, flying to Yellowknife, spending a couple of days in Yellowknife, and then flying back. These individuals can get down there and back same day, if not, one night, as opposed to many. There's lots of opportunity here, and this is a good-news story. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Oral questions. Member for Yellowknife Centre.
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my questions are for the Minister of Health and Social Services. When he was a member of the Social Programs Standing Committee, he and his colleagues made 70 recommendations on the Child and Family Services Act. The committee report says: "We also recognize that some of our most important recommendations will require investment. The committee believes very strongly that the future of the NWT children and families warrants this investment." That was nine years ago. What happened to those recommendations? Mahsi.
Masi. Minister of Health and Social Services.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I'm actually quite proud of the work that we did on the 16th Assembly on that report. Tom Beaulieu, the Member for Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh was the chair of that committee.
When I became the Minister of Health and Social Services five years ago, not seven as the Member has indicated, one of the first questions I asked is: where are we in implementing the recommendations from the standing committee? I was deeply saddened to realize that no progress had been made on any of the recommendations.
At that time, I made it a priority for the department to begin moving on those recommendations, moving forward on all those recommendations, which is where we came up with Building Stronger Families, which in retrospect is consistent with all the recommendations from the Truth and Reconciliation respecting children in care. It is a prevention-based system as opposed to an apprehension-based system.
Over the last number of years, the last three-and-a-half, four years, we have made significant changes to legislation as per the recommendations in both the Auditor General's report, as well as the report from standing committee. We have set up changes on the information systems that we heard clearly from our staff that our CFI system was garbage and was not functional and not useful. We have brought in the Matrix system. We made significant legislative changes to include the ability for youth beyond the age of 18 to receive services. We have resources. We have put money into the systems that we've put in place.
I anticipate the Member's question is going to the fact that we haven't increased our staffing complement, and the Member is 100 percent right. The audit was clear. In my opinion, we have done the right things with respect to the system we put in place, but we have failed to adequately resource. There's no question. To that end, I will be proposing an increase in positions in the next business-planning cycle to address the most underserved areas. The Member has identified some of them in her statement. In addition, we are going to do more analysis on whether or not we have the right types of positions in there for a longer term ask, which will be necessary in order to meet the needs of children and families in the Northwest Territories.
The findings of the audit were incredibly disappointing and of significant concern to me and to others. We are committed to making the improvement, utilizing Building Stronger Families, working with our staff, and properly resourcing these services.
The Minister can't have it both ways. He can't say that he's doing everything possible to help Child and Family Services, and then at the same time acknowledge that the Auditor General has again come up with another 11 recommendations that address children in jeopardy. These are not lightweight issues. They are the most, as my colleague from Hay River North said, "the most vulnerable people in our society." Many of these recommendations have been repeated. Why are we waiting another four years for the Minister to do what he already said he would do, to the Auditor General, in 2014?
I'm not arguing with the Member. I've acknowledged that we need to do better. We need to do more. I do encourage the Member to read the Auditor General's previous report. It was a far broader audit and actually included significant recommendations to actually improve accountability and to improve the system. They didn't audit those portions of the system this time, and I can say that we have done those foundational pieces. That's where a lot of our attention was put. We did those while at the same time expecting our employees at the front line to evolve but also continue to providing services. Clearly, we spread them too thin. There's no question.
Nowhere have I said we're planning to make these changes in four years. That's the Member's statement. We're planning in the next two years to bring about profound changes in the delivery of Building Stronger Families that will meet the needs of our residents. There will always be risk. Our job is to mitigate and reduce risk as much as possible, and we are committed to doing that, and we have already started. Our internal audit has shown many of the same things as the Auditor General's report. We've been working on making these improvements over the last number of months. We can actually show some of those improvements now, and there will be things rolling out in the next couple of months, as well over the next two years, to bring about those changes that the Member and all Members and residents of the Northwest Territories want. We're committed to getting it right.
I think there's a misunderstanding here. The Minister knew about these problems in 2009. He knew about them in 2014. He's been reminded about them this week. My question is: when is the Minister going to show leadership on this issue? It is he who fights for the budget and argues over the spending priorities. Why, over all these years, has he been unable to make the business case to adequately finance Child and Family Services?
The system that existed before was purely an apprehension-based system that did not actually focus on building families or supporting the residents of the Northwest Territories. If a child was at risk, they were taken. That is not what the residents of the Northwest Territories told us they wanted. They wanted a system that supported families and help build families. That's what we put in place.
Again, we acknowledge that we did not necessarily get it right as far as roll-out. We spread our staff too thin. We have invested millions of dollars in this change initiative to bring in the tools that our employees told us they must and need to have in order to do the work of Child and Family Services, which includes bringing in the system. The Member's assertion that nothing was invested in here is completely unfounded. Where we did not nail it, where we did not get it right, was providing our staff with the available resources. We are struggling in two ways. We have massive turnover, which is incredibly frustrating. This is a very high-burnout profession, and our employees are feeling the pressure of being spread too thin. We are working with them to address that.
I've already indicated we are intending to increase the number of positions through the next budget cycle. We have put in a proposal to do that, which is going to come to this House for all Members to see. They can see the actions in front of them. They know what's coming, and we are prepared to invest more. We are prepared to get it right.
Member for Yellowknife Centre.
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I don't have a firm grip on the timeline in which these changes are going to take place. What we've heard, in 2014 we heard it, in 2009 we heard it, in the year 2000, from the Child Welfare League is that these changes need to be made urgently. Children's lives are impacted by the decisions that are being made by the Minister and his officials. Given the urgency that is repeated yet again, how is the Minister going to ensure that, this time, the needs of children are going to be met? Mahsi.
The Member is going to have an opportunity, as will all Members, to sit down with the department staff and go through the action plan that we are proposing.
Many of the actions have already begun. When I saw the results of our own internal audit, one of my directions to the department was to begin anticipatory hiring and put in a more aggressive recruitment campaign to get out and get as many people into the pipe as possible, start getting these people in and trained up, so that they can provide these services, to the point where we are prepared to double-fill some positions until such a time as new positions can be established. We know there is going to be turnover. We want to mitigate the harm caused by the revolving door of professionals.
Having said that, these professionals are amazing. They are doing important work. They are doing it in a very difficult time of change. I have talked to many of the social workers, and I haven't felt opposition to Building Stronger Families, but I have felt frustration and lack of resources.
I agree with the Member. We are doing it. We are taking action. On December 12th, when the committee meets with the deputy, as well as the auditors, they are going to see the plan. I am looking for their input as well, Mr. Speaker. This is a territorial issue. This is an Assembly issue. We are going to get it right. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I would like to remind Members that we have only gone through two Members, and it has been 15 minutes. I would like to remind Members to keep their preamble short and, also, answers from the executive as short as possible. We still have nine Members to go through, so just a caution.
Oral questions. Member for Nunakput.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I will try to keep most of this short. Mr. Speaker, my questions are for the Minister of Health and Social Services on children in care. Mr. Speaker, children who are in temporary and permanent care are extremely vulnerable in every aspect of their health and well-being, where the development is extremely dependent on the adults who control them and their environment.
The Auditor General report has found that children were not consistently monitored and/or interviewed. Mr. Speaker, what can the Minister do for these children, if they are not being regularly contacted by Health and Social Services, and to ensure that the views of children in this system are known? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Minister of Health and Social Services.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we did work very closely with the Auditor General during this report, and in a number of situations, they did identify files and individuals where they thought there was some immediate risk. We dealt with those immediately. We reached out with our staff to engage with those people that were in immediate risk.
In addition to that, we have also conducted some of our own audits. We have seen those things. We have been reaching out to residents across the Northwest Territories to make sure that we are actually meeting those standards now. In many cases, we are. We are still struggling in some jurisdictions where we have low staff numbers, which is one of the reasons that we are working hard to fill some of these positions, recognizing that we also hope to increase the number of positions through the next budgeting cycle, should that pass in this House. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I appreciate the response. Mr. Speaker, earlier in this Assembly, I mentioned that Health is such a massive department; I think we need to look at something just for children and for elders, for that matter, so that issues like this don't reoccur.
Mr. Speaker, earlier I spoke about the extreme dependency children have on the adults that they are surrounded with, and it is an injustice when children don't know their own rights. Mr. Speaker, what can Health and Social Services do to ensure children and guardians are well aware of child rights so that they are protected in mind, body, and spirit?
Unfortunately, this is one of the areas where the auditor said that we aren't doing as good as we need to do, and we aren't having as much follow-up with our residents. That includes both the families as well as the children as we need to. We are stepping that up. We are making sure, moving forward, that there is regular contact. Part of our requirement is to help people understand their rights under the legislation, but also the services that are available to them.
We are trying to move away from the apprehension system more to a prevention system, so we are also working with families on a voluntary basis. We have had a significant increase in the number of voluntary files; we have seen a decrease in a number of permanent apprehensions.
In some areas, we are moving in the right direction, but when it comes to the individual contact with those kids, we need to do better.
I believe it is an important aspect of everything. Sometimes we work around the system, but the system needs to focus more on human beings.
Mr. Speaker, I know a woman in my riding who had to give up her child in order to help her escape the mother's impoverished circumstances. In foster care, foster parents are given a rate in order to meet the child's basic needs. Mr. Speaker, when guardianship is transferred to a relative, why aren't the relatives given the same foster rate to meet the child's basic needs?
This is one of the issues that came up in the review of Child and Family Services that the Member from Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh and I participated in. We have made some changes within the system so that, if a family member wants to foster the child and become their caregiver, we can actually facilitate that and help them and provide them with a foster fee. If they were to adopt the child, that would become a familiar relationship, and it wouldn't necessarily get some coverage.
Once again, the system we are putting in place is about building stronger families and supporting families through these periods. Even if they were to take a child on and adopt them and then start experiencing some difficulties, they could still come to us on a voluntary basis and look for the supports they need on a short-term basis to help them get back to where they are, which is providing the care they need to for their adopted children.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, in my Member's statement I talked about a couple of possibilities that I have been thinking about for post-secondary education in the NWT. I recognize that one of the ideas that I have around turning the Stanton Hospital into a school has a lot of logistics to it, and it would take a full department or several departments to work on it, but I would like to ask the Minister of Education questions on what is possible in Fort Smith.
In the foundational review, it was contemplated to move a lot of the programs out of Fort Smith. I would like to ask the Minister if she could start to look at the possibility of changing some of the programs from what currently exists to programs for the students who will be studying environment and conservation programs, I suppose. Thank you.
Masi. Minister of Education, Culture and Employment.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. First of all, I would like to clarify that at no time was it my intention to move programs out of Fort Smith. My vision is to actually expand and strengthen programs in all campuses. It is not about one community or another.
I do want to also talk about the idea of ENR and what the Member had talked about. Yes, that is part of our visioning exercise that we need to do, is going throughout the territory and looking at the strengths that we have to offer and getting that from all of the communities, all of the people, so that when people identify one of the strengths, ENR, I see, is one of our strengths. Then, from that, we work on the visioning exercise for the college to be able to actualize the territorial vision. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I mentioned the investment that the federal government will be making in conservation, and I agree with the Minister that ENRTP program is a good program and produces lots of good officers that are valuable to the communities.
We also have other areas of land that need protection, with some of the work that we are doing in this House about improving some legislation for protected areas. I would like to ask the Minister if the Minister could start working with Indigenous governments to maybe look at the Indigenous guardianship programs, the Canadian Rangers, or even park officers, for that matter, where Fort Smith sits at the edge of probably the biggest national park in the country, and there are a lot of park officers there that could maybe get educated in Fort Smith. I would like to ask the Minister if she could look at the people involved in all of those areas, work with the people involved in all of those areas.
Yes, it is definitely important. This is a territory-wide issue. Our future for post-secondary is bigger than the people in this House, so it is important that we work with all levels of government, our municipal governments and our Aboriginal governments, for two reasons: to find out how we can best support the students; and the second one is to look at our vision and look at the strengths and identify areas that we can grow on. So, yes, I am seeing that part of the vision exercise is that we would be consulting with Indigenous governments to see what their vision is, as well.
Mr. Speaker, staying in the area of education, but not something that I mentioned in my Member's statement, is the research centre in Inuvik that's also part of Aurora College. I'd like to ask the Minister if she would look at what is possible for research. It appears as though Inuvik is blessed with probably the best fibre links, the best Internet connections in the world, and there's a research centre there. I'd like to ask the Minister if her department could work with the research centre to see how they could expand that to increase the studies and make Inuvik Aurora College into a world-class research institution.
I do have to say I really appreciate the questions today because the MLA has actually pointed out a lot of the vision things, a lot of our strengths, a lot of the areas that we need to work with. The reason that I'm really promoting to move into a polytechnic university is because that research money is leaving the Northwest Territories. We have hundreds of universities coming across the world up to Inuvik to study our issues, and we're not tapping into that money because we're still a college.
So moving into a polytechnic university will allow us to not only access that money, but it keeps the knowledge in the Northwest Territories. It has a lot of potential, and I am certainly going to expand on that. Thank you, Mr. Speaker
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh.
Lastly, I guess, is the more difficult of all of the tasks that I think we should be working on in post-secondary education, and that is the nursing school in Yellowknife, here, for the old Stanton. I realize that the Department of Health has other uses for that, but I still feel that there's room for that place to become a good nursing school for homecare, that has so much potential for our communities and our elders. It is also a great way to keep the elders in their home as long as possible and save a lot of money in the system by not having them go into long-term care. So I'd like to ask the Minister if she would continue to work with the Department of Health and Social Services to see what's possible there.
Currently, our nursing students do actually utilize the Stanton Hospital for their practicums. That is very important. Hands-on learning is critical within any university, certificate, diploma, or degree programming, so we will continue to work with Health and Social Services on utilizing that. I do note I hear the Member who is saying: can we make the school there? That, I cannot promise. What I can say is that the campus in Yellowknife has outgrown its current headquarters, and that has to be looked at. At this point, I can't say whether it would be part of the old Stanton Hospital or if it would be a new building, but what I can promise is that we will continue to work with Health and Social Services to make sure that we have the best practicum opportunities possible for our students. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
