Julian Morse

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'll be brief on this one. I just wanted to thank the Member for Deh Cho for bringing this forward. I really appreciate her work, and the Member for Range Lake for seconding the motion.

Mr. Speaker, I'm very happy to support this. This is absolutely an important issue to me, and I definitely know it's an important issue to the people of Frame Lake.

I made a statement about this earlier in session about the need for a prioritization or sorry, our need to prioritize this, our need to put money behind it to ensure that the priority is reflected in our actions, and so the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I'm adding my name to the growing list of MLAs who have risen in this House in the recent past to speak to the potential benefits to our health care system of expanding pharmacists' scope of practice.

Applause

I need to finish this, you guys.

The Member for Yellowknife Centre beat me to it during oral questions yesterday, but I certainly don't mind joining the chorus because I have also been hearing about this one from Frame Lake residents who are looking for anything we can do to help create efficiencies in our critically overburdened primary care system. To...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. And I know there's lots of people in our community who access the programs that Arctic Energy Alliance has put in place under this funding and would be concerned to hear that it might be that there's difficulties obtaining funding to keep it going. So I would appreciate if the Minister would keep us in the loop about that.

Just back to the funding itself, the total was I believe the Minister said $31.2 million. So have we managed to spend the entirety of that amount within the required time under the funding agreement?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Does the fund have time constraints on it? Is it something that we receive money for every year, or is it coming to an end at some point? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So I'd like to ask for a little bit more detail about the funds which are being reallocated under a low carbon economy leadership fund. Can the Minister describe the programs that fall under that, that $8 million funding.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And I'm very happy to hear that from the Minister. Mr. Speaker, will the Minister commit to a timeline of six months that being August 2024 to get these new regulations into force?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, as I noted in my Member's statement earlier today, the previous health Minister committed a year ago to bring changes to the pharmacists' scope of practice for early in the life of the 20th Assembly. How much progress has the health department made since the previous Minister's commitment, and well, that's my first question, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yes, I would appreciate hearing back from the Minister. And just I guess the clarification I'd like is if it hasn't been fully spent, the question of course is are we going to have the opportunity to spend it, or does the funding simply lapse on April 1st? Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think that's going to be a question for the future. It's probably not one the Minister can answer now. Thank you.

So, you know, it's kind of stating the obvious, I suppose, that the next fiscal year is really just a month away. Does the Minister expect that this funding is going to be secured before that time?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So can the Minister just kind of describe the low carbon economy leadership fund itself kind of holistically; what it is, the time period that it extends through, and yeah, I'll start with that. Thank you.