Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my questions are for the Minister of Health and Social Services. And one of the questions I have is related to preventative services. So can the Minister explain to us how many dental therapists does the Northwest Territories have currently on staff now, or if there's dental therapists, dental hygienists, and where are they located? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member for Inuvik Twin Lakes. Minister responsible for Health and Social Services.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And I appreciate the Member giving me notice on this so I could get that specific information. There are three dental therapists located in Fort Simpson, Fort McPherson, and Inuvik. There is a dental hygienist located in Fort Smith. There is a territorial specialist who is a licensed dental hygienist who provides frontline service to communities and is located in Yellowknife. And we also have dental hygienists who work on casual rotations to fill vacancies. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, you know, I want to say I think - I'm not sure if it's one or two of the dental therapists that we have, but just doing some reading on this over this last little while working on dental. This has been a big issue, and I was surprised to know that we actually had a dental therapy school in Fort Smith in 1972 that was opened that train local dental therapists free of charge so that they could go back to their communities, and I'm just wondering if we still have any of those dental therapists in the territory. You know, this is I just wanted to put that out there because that was good thinking.
So for the communities that don't have dental therapists or dental hygienists, does the Minister know how often that service is provided to each community? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And thank you to the Member for that additional information. I don't know if any of these therapists are ones who were trained in Fort Smith. I would hope that they would have retired by now but, you know, you never know. So, we have staff assigned to go to communities that don't have therapists or hygienists twice a school year. That's the benchmark of service. Sometimes, I will say upfront, we don't meet that because of staffing and travelrelated issues and school cancellations. But that's what our benchmark is.
Last year the Beaufort Delta and Sahtu regions did not have the correct number of visits, unfortunately. But on the other side, three communities were added that had not been previously seen by the GNWT, and those communities are Lutselk'e, N'dilo, and Dettah. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And thank you to the Minister for that information. So I know that the government - and I think we've had this discussion in the House, the government does get federal funding to fly in dentists into small communities so that they are able to get dental care into the communities. And I'm just wondering, and I did send the Minister, like, the approval, what's authorized. And I'm just going to - I'm not going to worry about 17 and over right now, even though that is a big issue, but 17 and under, like a recall exam/polishing is one in every six months. So I'm just wondering if the dentists that we're consulting and with the hygienists, are we even meeting these needs for our Indigenous communities, our kids under 17 in our communities? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Yes, thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I think that what the Member is talking about is the contracting that GNWT does on behalf of Indigenous Services Canada for NIHB. And so we let those contracts and they are primarily for travel costs - they are for travel costs. The dentist needs to get approval from NIHB for the services provided. And in terms of the services that they do provide, as the Member knows there is a preapproval process, and the dentists make their own determination of what service is most required by the patient. That's not something that we have oversight over. Although I will say we license dentists and we also supervise the complaint process. But in terms of what the dentist decides to do with the patient in the chair, that's on the dentist. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And so, Mr. Speaker, you know, I could - you know, I could highlight in probably three Member's statements on the article that I read and the history of dental therapy in Canada, and it looked at how Indigenous communities were lacking any oral preventative services. And so they came up with plans, and the plans were to train locals, send them back to their communities, and here we are again with no dental therapy schools and, you know, we've got a bill in front of the Minister. So now I just want to know if the Minister will look at other ways to ensure that preventative care is being completed in all communities and are making sure that these targets are met in all these communities that NIHB has outlined in what their approval schedule is for this? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And thank you for the question. I think the first thing that we need to do is meet the benchmark of two visits to each school each year. That would be a great start. We have had real trouble recruiting both dentists and dental hygienists in the Northwest Territories. And we have, of course, not given up on doing that but when we put out the requests for proposal in March, we got zero results. And the result is of that is that we are severely underserved by dental health specialists, and that's across the board. And I know that people can go to their health centre and ask to have service in a location where a dentist is and have their medical travel paid there. That's not a great solution, but it is one potential solution. It's not helped by the fact that in Inuvik, the dental clinic seems to be staffed intermittently and by locums. It's difficult to have a continuity of service there.
So I recognize that this has had an impact on preventative care, and it's a problem. If the Member has any ideas about how we can do more to recruit dentists and fill those contracts with - pardon me, recruit dental hygienists to do the school work, even on a locum basis, and how to attract dentists to doing this work, I'm certainly very interested to hear it. And I'll look up the website on the history of dental therapy.
I don't really understand why this profession has fallen by the wayside and has been taken over by dental hygienists. I think there's some scope of practice issues there. I did hear however, last week, that the University of Saskatchewan was considering relaunching their dental therapy school which might, in the end, be of benefit to us. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Member for Frame Lake.
