Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Member for Tu NedheWiilideh.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Earlier I had said that I'll be asking the Minister for clear and decisive action on the overdue improvements to the healthcare system here in the Northwest Territories. We are year three and a half into our mandate here already, and my question would be to the Minister. Earlier today I mentioned a series of healthcare recommendations issued by the Canadian Medical Association in August of last year. What action has the Minister of Health and Social Services taken in response to these recommendations? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member for Tu NedheWiilideh. Minister responsible for Health and Social Services.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I haven't seen those recommendations so I can't comment.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'm sure, you know, you'd just have to look online. I'm sure you'd be able to find that.
Moving forward, though, Mr. Speaker, last week in Ottawa Trudeau announced a pitch to probably about $196.1 billion over ten years to all the provinces and territories, additional $46.2 billion for the provinces and territories as well. So outside the CMA recommendation, what action or strategies to date have been taken and employed by the Minister's department to tackle the ongoing healthcare crisis here in the Northwest Territories? And if she could maybe just elaborate a little bit more about the money that's coming from Ottawa and maybe if you could help break that down and how can that help the healthcare system moving forward. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the federal government has offered a package of different kinds of money, CHT, CHT top up, escalator, tailored bilaterals, and so on. I'm not at liberty to discuss the details at this point.
I can say, however, that the federal government is focused on supporting territories and provinces in four specific areas. They are data, primary care reform, mental health and substance abuse, and aging with dignity as well as health human resources. As the Member, I am sure is aware, we introduced a health human resources plan in June of last year which was with medium and longterm aims to increase our resident workforce, and we followed that up in August with some shortterm incentives; that is, incentives that would work in the shortterm to bring more staff to us. In May, we completed our data strategy. This is what we are reporting on and to whom. And the Member can find the results of our reports on the Canadian Institute of Health Information website. They follow metrics for every province and territory and compare them to national averages. Mental health and substance use is a priority area for us. These are all priority areas. And we continue to invest in helping people regain their health by both services available in the territory and those that are available in the south.
In terms of primary healthcare, which is an effort to create teams to help patients rather than everybody being attached to a single healthcare provider, which is proving difficult to sustain, we have used federal money to create a primary healthcare pilot program which has not been used in the Member's home community of Fort Resolution but, which nonetheless, exists and which we are working on expanding because it has been very successful.
So those are some of the things that we're working on, and we feel that we are aligned with those federal priorities that were outlined in their plan last week and we look forward to developing action plans which will then release the money to us. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And thank you, Minister, for your answer. And I appreciate that. It seems that it's clear that many of the issues in the healthcare system are systematic in nature.
Will the Minister commit to a full operation review of the healthcare services in the Northwest Territories so that the findings of such review can inform necessary reforms and prepare the next Assembly to get ahead of this problem? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, both the department of health and the NTHSSA are part of the government renewal initiative. Phase 1 was to do an inventory of programs. Phase 2 is to look at how those programs are funded. So we're participating in that process and look forward to working with the results. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister. Final short supplementary. Member for Tu NedheWiilideh.
Yeah, thank you, Mr. Speaker. And thank you, Minister. Just part of the review that you probably are going to look at, can we also take a look at the medical travel review policy that's outdated and inflexible to improve the access to healthcare for those residing in small communities here in the Northwest Territories? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Yes, thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I'm sure the Member is aware, there is a review underway now of different components of the medical travel policy. I'm sure he's also aware that the benchmark for the medical travel policy is the NIHB benefits, which are available to status people. And it is our job to meet those benchmarks for the whole population. However, we are at this point subsidizing this federal program for NIHB, and that's something that we want to bring to an end. And I have a call with the Minister responsible for Indigenous Services Canada this week to talk about that. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Member for Kam Lake.
