R.J. Simpson

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So I've been furiously trying to find the Bourque report online. It's not that easy to find so I don't have it at my fingertips right now. But from what I've heard in the territory, the path forward is settling land claims. That's what I'm hearing from the Indigenous governments. I am interested in looking at the report. Whenever I hear about constitutional reform, I think that that would take all of our efforts and all of our focus would be on that and we wouldn't be achieving other things that might be more close -- closer in reach for us. So I'll leave it at that...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So without knowing exactly what the unit is going to encounter in their investigations because they're investigating -- they're looking into all of the data that's been collected over the years, all of the reports that have been published, they're hearing from frontline staff, from others within the department and the authorities. I can't say that we'll make everything public but I can definitely commit to providing regular updates to the Members and to the public through this House and other forums over the course of this initiative so that people can see what's...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So that's the work that this unit is going to do. I'll say the majority of what the health authorities do, the programs and services they deliver, they're necessary. They're not optional. You know, we're not going to send people who need dialysis all down south to the provinces to get their treatment. The types of services that residents need in the territory and that we can reasonably expect to deliver in the territory, we want to continue doing that. But the fact is that there's programming across the department -- or across the authorities that it could be...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And the Member's correct, the review is out. We are reviewing the review, so that's the work that's happening now.

The Council of Leaders, this is not a topic that has been raised at the Council of Leaders. The agenda there are decided upon by consensus or as close as we can get to consensus, and this has not come up yet. But the new commanding officer is scheduled to meet with the NWT Council of Leaders at the next meeting, so I look forward to seeing what comes of that. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And that is a priority. In fact, as Minister of Justice I establish the RCMP policing priorities. We go out for input from Indigenous governments and other stakeholders and from that we craft a limited number of policing priorities. One of those is to provide policing services that are responsive to the needs of Indigenous women, girls, families, and children experiencing family intimate partner violence and sexualized violence in the NWT. And there's only four priorities, and so that is one of the four priorities. So it is a priority for myself, and we've made it a...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. When we're looking at this system, we need to speak with those individuals who know it best. And so a dedicated email address has been set up for frontline workers, workers throughout the health care system, to be able to reach out to the health care system sustainability unit and provide their input. We don't want this to be a top down approach. We want to hear from everyone. And so steps have already been taken, submissions have already been received, and from what I understand there seems to be a bit of an uptick in those submissions given that it's rolled out for a...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thank you to the Member for letting me address this issue. So across Canada, health care services are strained. The North is no different. We hear all the time in this House, I hear from my own constituents, there's issues in the health care system. That's not news. That's nothing new. That's an acknowledgement that I want to make clear that I am making today.

One of the things we're doing to address these issues is the establishment of the health care system sustainability unit. Now, this is a unit that is positioned within my Department of the Executive and Indigenous...

-- point of order, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And I'll have to get back to the Member with some specific details about what meetings they plan on holding but there -- as I mentioned, this is not something that we're doing alone. And this unit is not there to make decisions about how things are going to work. They're there to look at, examine, investigate the system, and bring forward recommendations for the decision-makers to be able to make decisions about how things work. And the best decisions are made with broad input. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And the unit, it's not fully staffed up yet, but the staff members that they have have been pouring over all of these documents that the Member's referencing. A lot of work has been done. There's work that's been done 20 years ago that the staff are looking at. So we are really taking an approach that we don't need to start from scratch; a lot of work has been done. And even if there's, you know, letters from the medical association or things like that, those also offer insight into what issues we might want to focus on, so those documents are definitely being looked at...