Thank you, Minister. Final supplementary. Member for Inuvik Twin Lakes.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, again, the federal government, like I said in my Member's statement, is forcing the hand of all of us to do their to do this work. They want us off oil. Our MP has said we need to move from oil. Okay, so what are we going to use? We've heard from other people, like pellets. We're sending our pellets in Canada to the UK. So oil and gas, we can't even use our oil and gas. Inuvik, we've had we had natural gas but now we're on truckedin propane. We're trucking it up on diesel fuel trucks. Like, this is not an NWT madeintheNWT. I mean, if Justin Trudeau wants to hear me, this is not working for us in the Northwest Territories. We probably have about 10,000 people that pay taxes and the rest are, you know, like underage or, you know, seniors. So how is this government, Minister Wawzonek, Minister of Finance, how are you going to go back and fix it? Like, we need businesses included in this, not just you know, and we need municipalities before it's been brought back to this House, before we vote on it, because I don't think this side of the House is going to support it, and then we're going to be forced at the hand to have a federal backstop.
So will this Minister, please, try and work with us to try and make sure all of the areas get covered so that we're not hurting anymore? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I know that because of our consensus government, I'm in a position to be able to share with the MLAs the correspondence we've written. They know I share their frustration. I can't necessarily publish those letters publicly, but they know I share their frustration. I was at a finance ministers meeting just last week. It is an opportunity not necessarily to say a lot, but I spoke about the carbon tax at my finance ministers meeting, Mr. Speaker. I share their frustration. It is unfortunate that when we went through the public process of engagement back last fall that we didn't have this level of discussion then. I did take the Members' recommended requests at that time to create the threetiered system. We did exactly as we were requested in that respect. Unfortunately, now we are at a position we're being asked to do more. I have, again I haven't received from the committee what happened at the public briefing that we had when it was the clause by clause, it became a public briefing. I know there was submissions made. I haven't received them. I've made it clear that if there is something that we can do for municipalities in terms of understanding their actuals that we can look at what we can do to try to support them. I haven't received that. We are down to the wire a little bit, Mr. Speaker, but we can pivot; we can react quickly. I am certain that we can find a path forward other than relying on the federal approach that seems to look at EVs and heat pumps and wood pellets. So, Mr. Speaker, we will keep working together and we'll see our path forward. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Member for Monfwi.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, you know there are some communities some community governments are funding recreation programs by renting out their sportsplex. For example, when you go to Behchoko, you will see Tlicho government department situated in the sportsplex. They're renting out space so that they can fund their recreation program.
Mr. Speaker, can the Minister confirm if there are active recreation departments or centres in every community in the Northwest Territories? Thank you.
Thank you, Member for Monfwi. Minister responsible for MACA.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, there is rec facilities in every community, whether it's a community hall, small gym, gym, rec centres, curling rinks, hockey rinks there. So if that's what the Member's looking for, yes, that's what's in these communities. Thank you.
Well, I can tell you Gameti does not have one. So can the Minister commit to ensuring every community has an active recreation department that is provided with an adequate budget that provides organized sports, sports activities? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we work with the municipal governments. We do have staff there. Gameti has, my understanding they have a school gym. They also have an outdoor rink that's covered. So there is facilities there. And we do provide funding in the communities for after school activities as well, whether it's the rec department or the school that offers these opportunities. But we're more than willing if there's a community that needs help, then we're more than willing to work with them. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
What is MACA doing to ensure that all communities have the resources they need to provide sports and recreation; i.e. a sports centre in Gameti? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, each community builds their own capital plan. They provide what facilities they want. Each community sometimes have just only a small community gym. In my riding, I have a community that has a small community gym. That's it, a small hall. So each community provides that opportunity, builds their own capital plan to provide that opportunity to build facilities in their communities. So we work with the communities. We have staff that work with them on their budgets and capital plan. We move forward on that. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Member for Kam Lake.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my questions are for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment.
Mr. Speaker, school boards currently do a pointintime count on September 30th of every year for student enrolment. This pointintime count includes specifications for additional funding like special support needs of individual students. Unfortunately, this pointintime count is not reflected in the school board's funding until 13 months later in the following school year. This makes serving the needs of existing students quite difficult for school boards.
So I'm wondering, can the Minister explain why funding is not delivered in the current school year to address the needs of existing student populations? Thank you.
Thank you, Member for Kam Lake. Minister responsible for ECE.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Part of the reason is to ensure that there is some stability, some consistency, and some certainty for education bodies. They will know what their budget will be in the next year based on the numbers from the current year. As well, we need to line up with the GNWT fiscal year. So these numbers need to get into this budget, and that process is largely finalized by December. So those are the primary reasons. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, it appears that this piece of kind of the GNWT funding or funding requirements are placing some unnecessary strain on the operational budget of some of our school boards, especially with changes that have happened in the last few years, or changes that can happen from year to year.
So while a pointintime count is done on September 30th, the policy that guides that states that children must be present for 50 percent or more of the month. In other jurisdictions, the pointintime count does not stipulate attendance and looks only at student enrolment on September 30th.
Is the Minister willing to remove the 50 percent attendance stipulation from the policy? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So attendance for the month of September is taken based on 60 percent of the sessional days in that month. Excused absences are included as an attending student. So if there's a legitimate reason why a student is not there, those are included as the student being in attendance.
There is always tweaks to the funding framework that happen, basically, yearly. An ongoing discussion that we have with the education bodies, and I'm happy to have that conversation about this particular item as well. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. And thank you to the Minister for that correction from the 50 to 60 percent as well.
School boards have indicated that COVIDrelated school closures and on the land absences can have an impact on school attendance as counted for student enrolment. So I'm wondering if the Minister can speak to kind of what provisions are in place to make sure that either COVID school closures that had students out of the classroom, or on the land experiences and absences, are somehow accounted for to make sure that school boards are not penalized for encouraging students to partake in on the land activities? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. If a school is closed due to COVID and there's no students attending, then those students aren't marked as absent so it doesn't count against those numbers. And in terms of being out on the land, if a student is out on the land with their family, they're hunting, that can be considered an excused absence because we recognize how important that is. There may be instances where this isn't recorded properly; it falls through the cracks. But that is our policy. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister. Final supplementary. Member for Kam Lake.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I have to say thank you to the Minister and both his deputy minister, who were willing to have a meeting about this at 6:30 this morning, to try and so I could learn some more about it and so I can say that they are very receptive to talking about it.
But given that, and given the importance of making sure that our school operations are properly funded for the students that are currently in our schools, will the Minister commit to following up with school boards to have a conversation about this policy and how it can be further tweaked? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. That is the regular work of the department. There's ongoing conversations, sometimes specific to this, this exact issue, sometimes peripheral to it that will inform the issue, so this is just what happens on a regular basis. And I will also say that school boards do have a surplus that they're allowed to maintain. It can't be greater than 7 percent but that is only to ensure that money is actually being spent on students. But school boards do have surpluses for instances where they are finding themselves short on funds. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Member for Monfwi.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, community government are struggling as is with funding received from MACA. I'm sure community government would like to build such facility to accommodate the young people, but they cannot afford with the money that they have currently.
So I'm going to ask the Minister, will the Minister commit to advocate to the Infrastructure Minister to build recreation centres in communities that lack such facilities, to promote sports, so that next Arctic Winter Games we will see more young people from small communities represented at Arctic Winter Games? Thank you.
Thank you, Member for Monfwi. Minister responsible for MACA.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, that's a unique way, I thank the Member for talking about that but, unfortunately, we have a process that we work with the communities and we develop their capital plan. A few years back, we got away from us, as the government, building facilities and so the communities get the money through that there. But what I can tell you is we've reached out with NWTAC and we've reached out to the federal government. So we're trying to get these funding opportunities to be able to bundle things, work on getting increase in funding so we can help communities build facilities. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Member for Yellowknife North.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Will the Minister of health recognize that the future of our health system is not just to keep moving our specialized services down to Alberta and bring back our rheumatology program? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member for Yellowknife North. Minister responsible for Health and Social Services.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, our priority is always patient care. The reality of the size of our territory is that we can't attract or fully engage specialists here the way a specialist working in a population of a million people can. So we continue to depend on Alberta health services to supplement our healthcare system, and we're very grateful that they triage our patients the same as Albertans so that we get very good service from them. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. You know, I recognize that sometimes we have to cancel a service because it is difficult; there's not the ability to get those practitioners. But I want to know whether this cancellation of rheumatology is a permanent cancellation because we couldn't find a person or whether this is now the new reality that we have lost this program forever? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I want to, first of all, say that the 400 people who need services from rheumatology continue to get those services, not in Yellowknife but in Alberta. So the program is not offered here but there are services available to people with rheumatoid arthritis.
What I want to say is that this is a temporary interruption. The medical director has been clear that the intention is to rebuild the program with a better service model that provides care close to home and she continues, I know, to work on this as a priority.
In the past, we have closed the chemotherapy unit and also the colonoscopy unit in order to rethink and improve the services and those services, of course, came back and rheumatology will too, but I can't say when.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'm wondering if when this decision was made, or if the Minister of health knows, whether this is actually more expensive? I imagine that we are sending 400 patients down to Alberta, we're going to get quite a big bill both from Alberta and our medical travel. So I'm just curious, in the longterm, when we're looking at rebuilding this program, does that actually save us money? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you. Mr. Speaker, this is a core service of the NTHSSA and so when people need this service, it's provided, and so we budget an amount, which we'll see in the main estimates. But if it turns out there's more demand than we have money for, then we go through a supplementary appropriation to ensure that we have the money we need to pay for the services that are offered.
The additional cost here is for medical travel but we always paid Alberta for the services and so we continue to pay them, in Edmonton now, rather than operating here. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Final supplementary. Member for Yellowknife North.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I hope that this is a priority to rebuild this program. And my question is, I believe at one point the hope was to build the continuity of care and not just be a rheumatology but, you know, a multidisciplinary arthritis program. And I'm wondering if in the plans going forward to do that that is in the works? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Yes, thank you. I don't have any information on a comprehensive program.
Osteoarthritis, which I have, and rheumatoid arthritis are different conditions. Rheumatoid arthritis is an immune system issue, usually diagnosed in people when they are in their early 30s and requires ongoing care. Osteoarthritis is not the same problem, and it's dealt with by orthopaedic surgeons, not by rheumatologists. So what I can see happening is that the more intense care that people with rheumatoid arthritis need will be rebuilt here in the NWT so that we can achieve our two goals of making patient care close to home a priority and having the service offered here. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister. Colleagues, our time for oral questions has expired. I'd just like to caution Members not to get too deep into a bill while it is before committee or committee deliberations for the next following weeks. But I do understand major concerns. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I wish to table a letter dated February 9th, 2023, which I want to send to the Premier and the Minister regarding community visits to Lutselk'e, Fort Resolution, Dettah, and N'dilo. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member for Tu NedheWiilideh. Tabling of documents. Member for Nunakput.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I wish to table the "feds" federal government extend restrictions to Arctic offshore drilling. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member for Nunakput. Tabling of documents. Member for Hay River South.
