Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’ve been reading some of the Hansard from the discussion yesterday in the House about naturopathic medicine and incorporating this practice in a new piece of legislation that’s come forward to licence health care practitioners in the Northwest Territories. In reading the Q and A in Hansard and stuff, I’m not really understanding what the issue is. So let me ask the Minister my own set of questions, because I can’t understand the answers to other people’s but maybe I’ll understand it if it’s just between me and her. Do you plan to include the practice of naturopathic medicine in new legislation coming forward to cover the practice of different disciplines within the Northwest Territories?
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The honourable Minister responsible for Health and Social Services, Ms. Lee.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I said that yesterday, and today I say it again, that we are reviewing the possibility of including that.
As I said in my Member’s statement, it would appear that this is something that is regulated already in other jurisdictions so we do have legislation that we could review in terms of wording and how it plays out in other jurisdictions. Why are we only reviewing this? This should be, I didn’t want to say a no brainer, but this to me should just be pretty straightforward, and if it isn’t, why isn’t it?
The writing of legislation to regulate a profession is a lot more complex than we think. Regulating a profession for engineers and architects took 10 years. Regulating a profession for nurse practitioners and midwives took many, many, many years. You would have to ask a lawyer and other professionals to see why that is so complex, but it is not just something that you do lightly. It’s not as expeditious and easy as we would like.
As I said to Members yesterday, we are working on an umbrella legislation that would be called Health and Social Services Profession Legislation. The groups that we have been working on to regulate are licensed practical nurses -- which we have a lot more of in the Territories -- psychologists, emergency medical service providers, and chiropractors. Those have been in the works and I said it’s possible to add naturopathic practitioners, but we have these other professions that are practicing in more numerous numbers that we are trying to regulate and they remain our priority.
None of that answer makes any sense to me. We are writing legislation for these different disciplines for people who are already delivering services in the Northwest Territories. How difficult and what would be the resistance to including naturopathic medicine in that? As I said, the precedent legislation is already out there in other jurisdictions. I don’t think it would take 10 years to go and see what they’re doing in Alberta or British Columbia and see what we could do. It just seems like an opportune time. If we’re already doing this legislation, why wouldn’t we add this one?
I did not say we would not do that. I said we are reviewing the possibility of adding that. This issue came up within the last couple of months and we are reviewing to see if we could add that extra profession. Let me say that lack of regulation does not preclude the practitioners from practicing. There’s nothing that precludes them from practicing.
Thank you, Ms. Lee. Final supplementary, Mrs. Groenewegen.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We as a government are going out on the road spending countless hundreds and thousands, probably millions of dollars trying to tell people they should come and leave their mark, come to the Northwest Territories. Yet we get a northern person who goes out, studies their profession, comes back to the Northwest Territories to practice and we’re saying don’t give up your registration down south because we don’t have any way to register you here, don’t give up your credentials from another jurisdiction. We’re just telling them they might as well go back to that jurisdiction to do it. There has to be protection for these practitioners. There has to be a framework. There has to be a scope of practice to protect their practice. I think the Minister should just say yes, this one will be included in this new legislation.
As I stated, we are looking at it, we’re reviewing it and looking at the possibility of including it.
Thank you, Ms. Lee. The honourable Member for Kam Lake, Mr. Ramsay.
