Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I just spoke about the health sustainability unit, and I think probably my questions are best directed towards the Premier on this one.
Mr. Speaker, first and foremost, can the Premier just reassure the public and reassure people watching that, you know, the sustainability unit is going to be looking at more than just service system cuts. If the Premier would like to share some more information about that on the record, it would be appreciated. Thank you.
Thank you, Member from Frame Lake. Mr. Premier.
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 Affairs, so separate from the health care system, that is going to examine the health care system, look at what we are offering and how we're offering it, make a determination of what are the core services that we need to offer, so that we're in line and we can work towards this Assembly's priority of offering -- or ensuring residents have access to basic health care.
So this is not a unit to look at, okay, what's core and what can we get rid of. It's to look at what are the core services and how are we offering them and how can we ensure we're offering them in the best possible way. There could be instances where we are working at cross purposes in the system. When you have a system that is so large that it has so many employees that involves so many agreements with the Government of Canada, things can get missed. And we haven't had an opportunity to really focus on the system and really analyze it and see what we're doing. There have been attempts in the past. They've originated from within the system. And sometimes they just get absorbed into the daily work of the system. So this is to really look at what we're doing, how we're doing it, and how we can do it better. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, how will the system sustainability unit be using information like the 2020 Physician Workforce Plan, workforce planning in general, the letter from the NWTMA; how will they be using these documents to inform their work? There's been a lot of work done on system sustainability already by practitioners. How is the unit going to be taking advantage of this work that's already been done? 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 as well. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you for those answers, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, how will the NWT Medical Association, the nurses’ union, other organizations like that be engaged and have input into the decisions being made by the health care sustainability unit?
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 little while now and things are moving along.
Thank you, Premier. Final supplementary. Member from Frame Lake.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate that they've set up an email address. I think what I'd appreciate is kind of a reassurance that there's going to be fundamental inclusion in the decision-making by practitioners, by frontline staff. I noted the gap in my Member's statement of this happening in the health care system. It's not happening enough, this fundamental inclusion. So how is the health care system sustainability unit going to be including practitioner input into their decision-making beyond just an email address but maybe having physicians, nurses, representatives at the table? Thank you, 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.
Mr. Premier. Oral questions. Member from Yellowknife Centre.
