Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
WHEREAS access to health care and addressing the effects of trauma is a priority for the 20th Legislative Assembly;
AND WHEREAS the financial outlook of the Northwest Territories is dire despite the efforts of the Government of the Northwest Territories through its fiscal strategy;
AND WHEREAS sustained shortages of staff have reduced access to health care services in NWT communities and placed increased operational demands on full-time staff leading to burnout;
AND WHEREAS the Auditor general of Canada indicated an emphasis of matter in the 2022-2023 Public Accounts concerning the financial performance of the Northwest Territories Health and Social Services Authority;
AND WHEREAS the continued use of agency nurses in the health care system is financially unsustainable;
AND WHEREAS the total consolidated debt of the Government of the Northwest Territories has reached $1.74 billion in breach of the Fiscal Responsibility Policy;
AND WHEREAS it is more important than ever for the government to improve the financial and operational sustainability of the Northwest Territories health care system.
NOW THEREFORE I MOVE, seconded by the honourable Member for Inuvik Boot Lake, that the House call on the Auditor general of Canada to conduct a performance audit of all aspects of the management of the Northwest Territories Health and Social Services Authority in its delivery of health care services, including medical travel and the recruitment and retention of nurses, doctors, and allied health professionals, and to prioritize this investigation;
AND FURTHERMORE, that the Speaker formally transmit this motion and the content of our proceedings in relation to this motion to the Office of the Auditor General of Canada for their consideration.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member from Range Lake. To the motion. Member from Range Lake.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I think this motion speaks for itself, but I will add some facts to it.
When the NTHSSA, the health authority, was first established in 2016, it inherited an accumulated deficit of $51 million. In 2020, that deficit had grown to $94 million. As of March 31st, 2024, this year, the accumulated deficit stands at $272.9 million. Mr. Speaker, from that escalation, from the amalgamation of the authorities to now, we are on an ever increasing track of financially unsustainable model of health care delivery in the Northwest Territories to the point where our own public accounts are being noted as -- or this area of spending and deficit are being noted as almost tanking the entire government's fiscal situation. We need to get to grips with this, and I don't think we know how.
We have brought numerous independent third-party reports over the years. We have brought deficit reduction plans, strategies, working groups, committees. Your committees, Mr. Speaker, have looked at this over many years, and it's -- it's a persistent problem that is showing no improvements of slowing down. And not only that, if it wasn't just the value for money for health care, it's the quality of health care that Northerners are -- that Northerners have access to.
And we see the issues with administering health care leading to programs or services shutting down. Perhaps most well-known is the obstetrics and birthing services. I think Inuvik struck -- the Inuvik hospital struggles with this. The Yellowknife hospital struggles with this. Agency nurses are being deployed because we can't obtain the specialized nurses that can do this work. And no one knows why when we ask these questions. And I know there's a problem in Canada, but there's a bigger problem here. And we need to get to the bottom of it. And I think, just as the Premier spoke to when he was telling the House and the public about the new health care sustainability unit, we need someone from outside of the authority to find the solutions to make things more sustainable. And this motion calls for our auditor, the Auditor general of Canada to do the same thing. And I think -- I agree with the Premier, but I think it's even better to have someone completely outside of the GNWT to do this work. And rather than hire someone and use taxpayer dollars to get yet another review, let's get our auditor, who we don't pay for, but does expectational work, high quality work, and can really give us some recommendations that we can put into practice and start to solve this crisis of health care.
We know it's not getting any better. We know that there's lots of effort that this government's trying, that previous governments have tried. So the motion here is not to scold anyone. It's to bring that expert eyes of the auditor general to bear to solve this problem, because there are so many different -- it's a multifaceted problem, and I don't think -- I think having that resource of the auditor general, with all their expertise, is the right way to go here.
And I look forward to the debate today, and I look forward to continuing to work with our Cabinet colleagues, and Members on this side of the House as well, to solve this problem over the coming years of this government. But I think if we have this help from the auditor general, it's going to be a lot easier. And where my mind goes is, you know, first to the people of the Northwest Territories who need access to medical care, especially as things -- you know, as our economy slows down, as costs continue to increase, as it gets hard -- as climate change continues to create struggles, our health -- as people age, we're going to need more access to health care. We're going to need a stronger more robust health care system to weather the storm of these challenges, and we know it's breaking. So we need to do this for the sake of our residents. We need to get a clear -- clear answers forward from an independent unimpeachable source of expertise. And our workers need this too.
I have many nurses, doctors, allied professionals, who live in the Range Lake riding, and they've been talking to me since the election, and they're not happy with the direction that health care has taken over the years. They're not satisfied that we're doing enough as a government to solve the problem now. And we brought a lot of advocacy to their plight and to try to help the quality of -- the quality of life of workers and make it more attractive, more meaningful, for recruitment and retention in the health care system. But it's just not working. So if we have this -- again, this help, this expertise, that can tell us how we can make the system better, it's going to be a benefit to everyone in the Northwest Territories for generations to come. And this can be the government that finally, finally, sets health care on the right course for the Northwest Territories. And that's what I hope this motion will achieve, and I ask my colleagues to support it. Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member from Range Lake. Motions. To the motion. Member from Frame Lake -- oh sorry, Inuvik Boot Lake.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, as the seconder of this motion, I certainly echo the comments of my colleague from Range Lake. Mr. Speaker, I know the Minister's aware of this issue. I know this is a national issue. I know through briefings and dialogues we've had with the Minister that, you know, she is going to be looking at ways we can improve this system, and I certainly appreciate that and I have every confidence in that. But, Mr. Speaker, this is a tool. It's a tool that we have in our toolbox that we can use. As the MLA from Range Lake has said, it's a tool that comes to us without a cost attached to it and can help us create what we need, which is a roadmap. And if this is a tool we have that we can use to help create that roadmap to success, to assist us as government, to move forward and get where we need to be with our health care delivery, then I think, Mr. Speaker, it's only proper that we use that tool. So thank you.
Thank you, Member from Inuvik Boot Lake. To the motion. Member from Frame Lake.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I am rising in support of this motion today. In my October 24th statement, I asked the Minister to acknowledge the significant issues in our health care system publicly and put forward to address -- put forward a plan to address these issues. Today I'd like to publicly acknowledge the issues myself.
Mr. Speaker, I have been speaking to health care practitioners for many years now. I certainly spoke to numerous practitioners during the election period. This collection of practitioners have come to represent a concerningly wide breadth of professions and a collective of individuals across our health care service spectrum. To name a few, Mr. Speaker, occupational therapists, speech-language pathologists, countless different nurses, a number of different doctors working in various roles in our system, people who have worked in management, people who have worked -- and many people who are working on our frontlines. All of these are people whose opinions and perspectives I deeply respect and have listened to with significant concern because they have come to me in desperation and told me that they are on the verge of leaving, or have already left, their positions in our health care system because of significant issues with how the system is being managed. In particular, the overwhelming message I have heard from practitioners is that they feel their voices are not being heard by decision-makers.
I'm going to share one or two of these voices in the House today in their own words. Both of these are people who have left our system to work elsewhere. I quote:
I remember when the unfolding of the new hospital was happening, and we would have meetings about the changes, and they would tell us that our feedback wasn't welcome because the decisions had already been made. Our supervisor asked once, so what do you guys think? And everyone was silent, staring at them. So I said, does it actually matter? Will telling you what we think impact this change in any way? And this person couldn't answer, and everyone got up and left the meeting. It was such an angry and uncomfortable place to work because people have no control over their environment or their role.
Mr. Speaker, the next voice is from a doctor I met with who illustrated for me, in stark terms, that they felt there was a lack of respect for physicians in our system, that they were seen as a problem to be managed by senior management, that they were entitled, overpaid, not working as hard as they should be. This person was concerned that over time, we're going to hollow out the core of our local physicians and replace them with only locums. Mr. Speaker, this person said to me, with I think a lot of sadness, that Yellowknife is a fabulous place to work. They loved the community. They loved their colleagues. In some ways, they felt we were ahead of many southern jurisdictions and so leaving was not an easy decision for them to make.
Mr. Speaker, the fact that so many practitioners' frustrations with these problems had become so great that it caused them to either leave the system, or move somewhere else or leave a career that they care about entirely, speaks to the seriousness of the issues they are speaking to.
What stands out to me also is the breadth of these voices. We're not talking about a problematic unit or a difficult group of individuals. The issues that I've been hearing about have been coming from widely across the system.
The thing I found so perplexing when considering these issues is how fundamentally simple the problem seems. We clearly need to look at how we're managing the system and ensure we are doing a better job of including practitioner voices fundamentally in decision-making and work to do whatever we can to improve employee morale in our system. Perhaps this is a simple statement to make, but it seems that implementing this change effectively has proved to be a significant challenge in our system. So I am of the opinion that we need outside help to achieve it.
There are experts in this kind of organizational change, and I think we need to employ this kind of expertise to help us understand how we can make changes to our management systems to address these issues that so many practitioners are asking for. I believe this work will need to go beyond superficial efforts like an occasional town hall meeting or meetings from time to time to talk about how things are going. I think it will involve fundamental changes to how decisions are being made in the system. It may require structural changes within the system to ensure sustainability of the shift. It will necessarily be a significant change to the workplace culture in our health care system. Making this shift and assessing these systemic issues, in my opinion, needs to be a key focus of an audit of the system, if not the main focus.
Mr. Speaker, there is a lot of reason for hope. I studied making changes such as those I'm speaking to in school and would encourage people to take heart in knowing that making these kind of significant workplace cultural shifts is something that a large number of people have expertise in. It is the focus of their careers, and these kinds of change management and organizational management experts can help us make this change. This is something which absolutely can be done. It has been done in thousands of organizations, and it can be done in ours.
I also think there is comfort to be found in knowing that, as I said the other day in my statement on system sustainability, leadership and organizational management theory tells us that the best way to be effective in our decision-making is to consider the perspectives of individuals throughout the organization. So I think making the cultural shift I've been speaking to will open us up to a huge wealth of information as to how we can begin solving the various problems we have in this system. I know that wealth of knowledge exists because I've spoken to so many of these people myself, and I've heard their ideas firsthand. This is an incredibly well educated, high capacity, and passionate workforce, Mr. Speaker. This is a formidable resource to have at our fingertips, and we owe it to ourselves and the residents of the NWT to listen to and implement their ideas for how we can best deliver health care effectively in our territory.
Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the Member for Range Lake and the Member for Inuvik Boot Lake for bringing this motion forward. I think that, as I've illustrated in my comments today, we have heard from a plethora of voices in our system that changes are needed. They are calling on us desperately to take action. I think this is one of the actions that we can take. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member from Frame Lake. To the motion. Member from Yellowknife Centre.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, yes, I too want to acknowledge the champion of health care we have here, my good colleague from the Range Lake riding. I know that I share his passion, and that was kind of why what started with the town hall meeting we had this summer which is to hear the voices of the everyday family, the everyday person, struggling with health care challenges. And I reiterate what I said before a few days ago, not at length, but I want to point out that the building was busting at the seams. We were probably borderline on the fire marshal's load capacity of the building. No one counted, by the way, just to make sure. But the truth be told is we'd never seen such a turnout in Yellowknife at any type of meeting like this. It was amazing. And they were respectful, and they were helpful, and they were telling their stories, their journeys, Mr. Speaker.
But, Mr. Speaker, the challenge, of course, is this, is that what's next? And even people ask me, you know, and my good colleague Mr. Testart, what's next? We tell you these stories, we tell you these concerns and pains, we need something to change. You know, people would describe it the proverbial the train is coming off the track, is it too late? I don't think it's too late. As a matter of fact, I think we don't have -- we couldn't have a better opportunity than now because we're in that point, like we have to collectively start pulling together. So as they say, with tragedy sometimes comes this great opportunity. And here it is, we could turn this around.
Now, again, another example of -- in the sense of a description is, I mean, when things have gotten this way, it wasn't overnight, you know. No one's suggesting chaos and disorder. But what we're suggesting is the fact that it's true, as my other colleague had mentioned, you know, doctors and nurses will tell us they are getting tired of providing advice, skills, professionals who have decades of knowledge, on how to do things better, could make the very difference.
So what is a performance audit, Mr. Speaker? To be crystal clear, both to the Minister, the government, and certainly the media, it's not a witch hunt. It's not in any form. And it shouldn't be contrived or construed in any way it is. It's simply asking are we getting value for money? Is there a better way to do this? Are we doing the things that we should be doing? Can we do them better? That's what it's about. It's about trying to find a path through these challenges. It will be overwhelming. But the auditor general office is free. They have the talent, the skills, the abilities. They have the vision to pull it all together on a song sheet and start focusing on a direction so we can all be singing on the same sheet working towards a better outcome, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, we need to show our teams, our teams of professionals, be it administrators, be it support workers at the hospital, be it doctors, you know, nurse practitioners, everyone, that we care so much we're going to go through the system and make sure.
The great thing about the auditor general's office, Mr. Speaker, is they're unfetterred. We'll point them in a direction and say, we want you to find the best way of what's happening here. They don't show up with a prewritten decision on how we're -- and then say, this is how we're going to get there. In other words, they won't determine the outcome until they see where it takes them. And to them, they -- out of very few people, they don't -- not a lot of people have that skill. And the fact that it's outside, it will be them.
Now, I remember -- I'm getting old, so now I'm starting to say I remember, and -- but I remember, we used to have a great hospital administrator, Dennis Cleaver. He was great, he could -- being the best of people, whether it was doctors, admin people knew -- he knew them, they knew him, and he really understood. That's why I was trying to raise the other day -- and to be frank, changing the head of the system it doesn't do anything. We have to get into the morale, into the functions, into the systems. That's why we need, as I said, a Jane Phillipot type who understands the DNA of how everything comes together like a great conductor. And they'll say things like well, I see that it's working, they're doing the best but it's actually not working to an outcome that actually is effective. And hence that's the type of conversation only these types of experts can have.
Mr. Speaker, as this is a motion, as we know, an important motion, and I feel like this is going to be the health care Assembly. We're just going to keep rallying on health care until we not only see change, if not better, we feel change. But I worry about the risk about how much money and we can no longer afford to keep doing things the same way as we do them.
Now, I know, again, this is a motion, and I recognize it is a suggestion to the Assembly, and I don't know what Cabinet's going to do. As a matter of fact -- I mean, I don't know if anybody on this side knows what they're going to do. But I'll -- I won't be the first in the sense of just today, but I'll certainly be the first at least this afternoon and say I hope Cabinet is willing to have a free vote on this particular issue. Because this isn't just fixing my riding, my colleague's riding, my regional ridings. This is affecting everybody's ridings. And I would hope that they would want to be partners in this solution by having that little bit of a thumbprint on this motion by saying I supported it, and I was part of the path to a reinvigored health care system, a renewed health care system, that helps all. Because if we keep going the same way we do, Mr. Speaker -- and I'm going to try to wrap it up here -- you know, we will see cuts that we don't want to have, we will see change that we're forced to make, we will see departments -- not just health, but the ripple effect of this, having to make choices no one wants to make. I don't want to hear the fact that we can't afford a doctor in oncology because we don't have any more money anymore. I don't want to hear those stories. I want to hear that we can provide desperately needed services in the regions. I don't want to hear about the unavailability or the unaffordable of birthing units in Inuvik. This is our chance to be part of that solution before we say it's too late.
So, Mr. Speaker, again, a big fan of Steven Cubby. His saying begin with the end of mine. I think this motion says it. Let's begin hoping we can build a better health care system, and now let's work to achieve that. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member from Yellowknife Centre. To the motion. Member from Yellowknife North.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I will be supporting this motion. I also want to acknowledge and recognize that this could take a while. This could take about two years, at least, to complete if they do agree, if the auditor -- Office of the Auditor General does agree to conduct an audit. So this will not be a quick fix or an immediate solution. But I think that it is a tool that would be useful in our toolbox in order to improve a system that desperately needs improvement. So I also recognize that an audit -- a performance audit would usually assess performance against the standards and goals and targets that we have established. And one problem is that in our health care system, we seem to have been struggling in many cases to set those explicit standards or goals or targets. One example being nurse/patient ratios at Stanton hospital, and so it might be hard to assess performance against when we don't know what the goals have been that we're trying to set for ourselves. So I would hope that the Office of the Auditor General might be able to point us to, say, more broadly accepted national standards to help evaluate our performance and look at models of rural health care and primary care used in other remote communities in the country.
I understand that in some ways our system is unique, but we're certainly not the first jurisdiction in the world to have rural health care systems and remote communities. And so I think we do need to look to what other standards are out there and how we stack up.
I would also hope that the Office of the Auditor General could provide some insight into why our health authority and Department of Health and Social Services seems to have had so much trouble in being able to create system plans to really step back and look at the bigger picture, to create the plans and the targets, such as for example, a system workforce plan, and what have been the barriers to actually implementing plans like this. Despite many studies and reports and recommendations produced over the years internally, what have been the barriers preventing those things from coming to light and actually being well utilized and implemented.
With regard to staff retention, one thing I would certainly appreciate is a review of our policies around how and when frontline health care employees can take their annual leave ideally with some indication of how our policies and practices compare to other small health care systems and rurally-based health care systems in the country. We cannot surely be the first ones to confront these challenges of how to ensure staff can get the full leave that they're entitled to when we have limited staff and small systems.
I would also appreciate an evaluation of the extent to which exit interviews are implemented, so when staff do decide to leave, the rate at which we're actually conducting the exit interviews and the extent to which the insights gained through those interviews lead to changes to prevent other staff from leaving where possible. I understand that there will always be cases where people need to leave for personal reasons, family reasons, whatever it is. But if we're seeing patterns of preventible reasons that people are leaving, that those could be used to improve the system to improve staff retention.
Now, we've all been talking this week about how we're establishing a new health care system sustainability unit with the limited resources that we do have, and that has a number of years of work ahead. So my hope is that the work of the Office of the Auditor General could dovetail with that work. It could help raise some flags, identify areas for that unit to focus on, and ideally help to make the work of the new health care system sustainability unit more focused and more efficient because, you know, they have a lot of things to try to sift through and understand, a lot of previous documents and data, and so anything that the Office of the Auditor General could do to help point towards things that really raised a lot of questions or concerns might really make the work of that unit more effective.
So with that, I'll just conclude by saying I do support the motion. I'm hopeful that this can help, even though it won't be an immediate or quick fix, and so we do have to continue working on some of the shorter term solutions as well but this could be one of the more medium term -- medium-term steps that we can take to improve the system. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member from Yellowknife North. To the motion. Member from the Sahtu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I too will be supporting this motion. This motion will assist in retaining the services of the auditor general. And as my Members have said, we're not engaging in any witch hunt by any means. The performance review audit will give us tools to improve our current system. We're here to serve the people, and if we can be more efficient in the auditor general's review directly going to the recommendations of the audit on being more efficient in our health care delivery.
Similarly to the private sector, accountants really serve the entrepreneur in being cost efficient. On those principles of providing management skills, we need to produce the tools of recognition through an auditor general's report, and in my view, that'll really help our government to design, recognize, where we can pull up our socks and move ahead more efficiently.
Many of our small communities there, Mr. Speaker, depend solely on health care but limited facilities. That dependency is really on the system that we have now. And if there's room for improvements, I'm willing to participate in any way that I can. In recognition of the need for practitioners and trades in that system of health delivery, we can say to the previous statement I made the other day on working with the department of ECC to promote education. We have beneficiaries in the Sahtu that specialize in nursing and health deliveries. So if we can promote the recruitment and the noble trades position of health care delivery, that was my purpose of initiating that discussion through the statement I made. We need more trades. And in this case, in this motion, will help us recognize that. It also will recognize our weaknesses, and I hope that we as a government will all stand together to help do a review of efficiencies and, more notably, look at the recommendations from the report that's going to be produced. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member from the Sahtu. To the motion. Member from Monfwi.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I do support -- I support this motion as well. The health care system in the NWT, especially in small communities, needs major improvements. Mr. Speaker, we want living in the small communities -- we want Cadillac services. We've been living with the Ford Focus services for a long time, you know, like, I mean, in the process -- in the process, our people are not getting the treatment they deserve. Some of our people are getting more sicker or misdiagnosed, you know, and we heard so many stories about medical travel too as well, you know, and the problem that it has on our vulnerables and those living with challenges. We heard of their experience. So we need to improve our services, especially in small communities, because we don't even have a medical doctor. Some patients, they wait long to see medical doctors. I mean, in Tlicho region, we're very fortunate because we have a physician that goes to our community, to our other Tlicho communities, but other communities, they don't have that advantage. So this I do support, and I feel for a lot of people living in the small communities that do get missed, a lot of misdiagnosis. We heard from other people about -- some people they have to pay their own way to Yellowknife to get the Cadillac services, which in small communities we lack that. And by the time they get here, for many it's too late. So for that reason, I do support this motion.
And I do support and encourage for more young, Indigenous to get into the health care field. And I hope that -- I know that will help with the recruitment and retention. Our people will stay in our community to deal with our problems with our issues and language, our culture, is not going to be a barrier. If we bring in outside people, there's going to be challenges for them. So I think we need to start focus on training, educating our young people and promoting them, you know, to take nurses and all the other professional fields. Thank you.
Thank you, Member from Monfwi. To the motion. Member from Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I rise to also give support to this motion, the performance audit of the management of the Government of the Northwest Territories Health and Social Services Authority, the last number of years, in the 19th Assembly, there were a lot of issues brought forward in regards to the health system. You know, and my colleagues talked about it a little bit there as well. I got to remind also that when we have a mace here, we talk about the Crown, and we have a treaty, and part of the treaty we have a medicine chest. And the people in our small communities have treaty expect the health care to be a priority for them.
Over the years, I've been bringing issues here to the House on almost every issue you could think of, including medical travel and how it's funded. And to me, that's also another big issue.
My colleagues spoke passionately about the health system and the retentions of the nurses and doctors. And I -- you know, I think this is long overdue. I think it's needed. We should also learn from what happened to me and my community. And for now, Mr. Speaker, I just want to keep it short and sweet, that this motion is something that I'm glad to hear and see and that was brought forward by my colleagues because it hits home when a lot of our members get misdiagnosed, they get sent home to the point some of my colleagues -- I mean, my constituents had babies in the bathtub because they were sent home. And there's no need for that. So this here will look at ways as to how we can improve the system, and I look forward to the recommendations. So, Mr. Speaker, I do support this motion. Thank you.
Thank you, Member from Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh. To the motion. Member from Mackenzie Delta.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I too will support this motion based on the concerns during the election. Many constituents brought forth concerns about the health care within the Northwest Territories, within the smaller communities with lack of staff. We put up with these concerns every day. Every day when I'm back home, even when I'm here, I'm getting calls with the concerns saying that, you know, why is this happening? Why is that happening in our -- in this time of the day when we should be advocating and looking after our residents of our communities. Our smaller communities are ones that are suffering more and more travelling. We have elders that are travelling to bigger centres and where they don't know the system and are left alone. We have patients who have medical conditions that can't travel alone, but they too are told that they're denied. And we just need some improvements in the health care system for not just my community but for the whole Northwest Territories. So just to let you know that I will be supporting this motion. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member from Mackenzie Delta. To the motion. Member from Great Slave.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I too will be supporting this motion for reasons very well outlined by everyone else. It's really troubling to me that probably two-thirds to three-quarters of the requests and feedback I get back in my office every day are about health-related issues, are about staff who feel completely at the end of their rope, and it's very telling to me that people within the government feel scared to have this feedback to an MLA. I really would encourage Cabinet to support this motion if at all possible; however, they usually abstain. But it's really -- it's really a good tool to have in our toolbox as other people have said. It's good to have an external lens on this issue. I also recognize it will take a long time to get results, but I think those results will be exacting so I will be supporting this motion. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member from Great Slave. To the motion. Member from Hay River North.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Cabinet will be abstaining from this out of respect for the independence of the Office of the Auditor General.
I just wanted to say that I agree with much of what I've heard from the Members. I receive complaints about the health care services as well just like every MLA in here. I do want to temper people's expectations. I've seen a number of OAG audits. It doesn't necessarily result in change. It's not a silver bullet. The OAG can come in, identify some issues, and then leave, and then we are looking at some issues that we're aware of without the necessarily the solutions to get at those issues.
What we proposed here is to create a health -- what we have done is create a health care system sustainability unit, so we can actually work right in the health care system. The staff is embedded in the health care system but still independent, able to bring real time information to the decision-makers to help actually do that work.
Another thing I want to mention to the Members as well is that the Office of the Auditor General, the way they work with these performance audits is they look at the policies in place, they look at what you say you're going to be doing, and then they look for documentation to confirm that you're doing what you say you're going to be doing, and that documentation needs to be dug up by somebody. And so that is the staff of the health authority. So the staff that are already burdened with a large workload with increasing, you know, complexities of care, now they have to go and chase down a bunch of documents. And while the Office of the Auditor General puts in a significant amount of time on these audits, thousands of hours, territorial health authority staff will also have to put in a significant amount of time that will take them away from the work that they normally do.
I also want to note that, you know, the Northwest Territories Health and Social Services Authority, it's the primary health care provider in, you know, 27, 28 communities, but we still have the Tlicho Community Services Agency and the Hay River Health and Social Services Agency. So this motion leaves out, you know, a significant part of the health care systems that serve, you know, 5, 6, 7, 8,000 residents in the Northwest Territories. So that's just something else to consider.
With that being said, we're not going to stand in the way of the wishes of the Assembly, but Cabinet will be abstaining. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Premier. To the motion. Member from Range Lake to conclude discussion.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, I will close discussion. So I was contemplating reading at length from Tabled Document 204-20(1), which is the patient survey that the Member for Yellowknife Centre and I brought forward to the House. I'm not going to do that. The document speaks for itself. But I do encourage everyone, in particular our Cabinet colleagues, to read that document and see in their own words what practitioners, members of the public, said in that survey. I think it's valuable to let them tell their own stories, and we'll continue to hear their -- we'll continue to hear those stories and bring them forward. This motion, and the other things that we're working on as a government, aren't going to change -- or are not going to change things overnight; I completely agree, there is no silver bullet.
But the audit that was just tabled in this House not too long ago was the result of a motion that was passed by the last Assembly. So, you know, it does take a while to get there, but I think we can all -- there are lots of lessons that we know we're going to learn from the Stanton renewal audit, you know, and not just were they following policy. Like, we have a very clear set of this is how we can avoid these things in the future, and I think that's -- that's the value of these things. And it shows that the OAG is listening to this Assembly. They're listening to the concerns of the people of the Northwest Territories. They always do. But we're just escalating that and asking them to prioritize this work because it is important. And with all these efforts that the Premier's office is putting towards health care sustainability, the health Minister, hopefully things do align and we're able to assess whether those things have been working and effective because those are policy changes that will now be part of any performance audit that comes forward.
I did want to say that my honourable friend from Yellowknife Centre mentioned that the town hall we had, and it was a pretty tremendous thing to have standing room only and have all these people engaged. Because sometimes Northerners do feel timid or that they can't speak out because they work for government or because they're worried about who's listening or there will be reprisals or they won't get contracts or whatever it happens to be. And it's a dam shame because this is our democracy, and it only works when we're listening to the people we serve.
So I was really pleased to see that. And during that, I made a commitment to bring forward this motion and that's the -- the people who were assembled wanted something like this. They wanted outside eyes taking a look at this. Because, quite frankly, Northerners are fed up, and things need to change. And it will take time. Everything we do will take time. But this puts us on the right course, and I think it's important that when we make a promise to the public, we keep it. So that's my effort today, Mr. Speaker. I look forward to the work of the auditor general. And I thank all my colleagues who have spoke in support of this motion. And I will recognize the commitment of the executive council to prioritize this as well, and we'll have to see -- hopefully everything aligns, and we start to make progress as soon as possible because, like I said, the system is breaking, if not already broken, and we desperately need to fix it. And I will ask for a recorded vote. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member from Range Lake. To the motion.
Question.
