Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are addressed to the Minister of Health and Social Services. I want to follow up on my Member’s statement and ask some questions on the Midwifery Program report and potential actions coming from that report. In the Minister’s responses to Mr. Bouchard last week there were some references to planning, though they were fairly vague references to planning and some references to expansion of the program. There were recommendations in the report to expand the program.
I’d like to know from the Minister if there is something happening now at the department. I would like to know from the Minister when a plan for expansion will be fully formulated, when it will be available to committee for comment.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The honourable Minister of Health and Social Services, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The department recognizes the value of the Midwifery Program. We’re interested in bringing the Midwifery Program back to more than just Fort Smith; across the Territories, actually. With that, we have allocated $75,000 of the Territorial Health System Sustainability Fund from the federal government in 2013-2014 to start the process.
I appreciate the Minister’s response that there’s some money being allocated. It has been allocated, as he’s said though, in 2013-2014. In my mind, that’s a problem. I don’t understand why, with the report that came out some four or five months ago now, we couldn’t start some planning in this budget year, 2012-2013, to do some implementation in 2013-2014. I’d ask the Minister to tell me why we can’t do planning this year for implementation in the next budget year.
I was referring to the money that we’re putting in for it. In 2012-2013 we’re doing community consultations. We’re going to review and update the NWT Midwifery Practice Framework and Midwife Regulations. In 2012-2013 we’re also going to do the preliminary health human resources planning for midwife recruitment and training options.
I’m a little confused by that response. So we are doing planning now, but we’re not going to be able to implement until 2014-2015. I think that’s what I heard the Minister say, and it confuses me.
I would like to ask the Minister, as well, about the money. He mentioned $75,000 and I understand that’s coming from the sustainability funding, which is federal funding which is not core funding, but it’s money that we get whenever the federal government decides we should get it.
I would like to ask the Minister whether or not any expansion to the Midwifery Program is going to be dependent on non-core funding, or is this going to be funding which will be ongoing and which will maintain the program from year to year.
The Midwifery Program is not going to be contingent on THSSI funding. THSSI funding will just be put in, the $75,000 for 2013-2014. However, the rest of the funding, which is planned for Hay River for $472,000 and Beaufort-Delta for $952,000 and expansion of the territorial Midwifery Program of $1.8 million, will be going through the House.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final supplementary, Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Again, I’m a little confused. From what the Minister just told me, it sounds as though there is a plan, although I don’t think that I necessarily agree with it. If, as the Minister says, we’re going to go to Hay River and then we’re going to go to the Beaufort-Delta – and you mentioned another number of $1.8 million that I don’t know for what – if we know that already, why can we not get that before committee now? Why can we not take what we know and plan for implementation in 2013-2014?
Again, we recognize the importance of the Midwifery Program, however, there are a lot of competing priorities in the Department of Health and Social Services. This is how we’re planning on rolling it out. We have paid for a consultant to do a review of the Midwifery Program for the Northwest Territories and these numbers are what we’re looking at out of that plan. We’re going to be reviewing that, of course, but for now we have paid for the consultant. This is how the report indicates we should roll out the Midwifery Program. The expansion in Hay River will be contingent upon the completion of the health centre over there.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The honourable Member for Range Lake, Mr. Dolynny.
