Alfred Moses

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m going to follow up to my Member’s statement, in terms of stem cell donor campaigns and awareness. I want to ask the Minister of Health and Social Services if the Minister is familiar with this program, and if so, is his department currently doing any type of programs that are similar in the Northwest Territories that they’re doing in other jurisdictions throughout Canada?

As I was saying, as it currently stands in Canada’s base for stem cell donors, there are 76 percent for Caucasians, 24 percent for ethnicities, and of those 24 percent for ethnicities only 0.9 percent are Aboriginal donors. That means if we have anybody that needs stem cells and is Aboriginal, it’s going to be very hard for them to find a donor.

Right now there is a special need for ethnic males in the ages 17 to 35.

Later today I will have questions for the Minister of Health and Social Services to see what this territory is doing to help close that need for this type of help.

I guess my next final question is: Why hadn’t the authority or department noticed this back when it started, when we first started getting our deficits and addressed it then, rather than addressing it now? Especially this year when we had this big controversy with the contracts. Why did the department not catch this ahead of time and adjust it then, instead of continuing to put this authority and government further and further in debt?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The Minister mentioned a base adjustment to the programs and specifically the contractor who’s taking care of the Charlotte Vehus Home and the Billy Moore Assisted Living Group Home. Can he give me a percentage on the base adjustments of the overall contract and what were the possible final numbers or where I can find the final numbers in both contracts that were, I guess, admitted?

Thanks for the explanation. If Members recall, this was a big issue for me when I was dealing with it, but speaking to the contractor that lost the award, there was a stipulation in the contract that if he hadn’t spent certain dollars in areas that he had signed during the contract, he had to give money back to the authority and he was doing that. So now we’re basing our contracts based on a deficit. That doesn’t make any sense, and if he could give a little bit more explanation how we award contracts based on our authority’s deficit. Can I get just a bit more clarity on awarding contracts...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In terms of one of the biggest, I guess, advocates for this type of research is the Canadian Blood Services out of Alberta. I’m asking for another commitment here from the Minister.

Would the Minister contact their office and get information about awareness campaigns, education materials, and look at developing a more comprehensive plan focused on partnership with the Canadian Blood Services to deliver this comprehensive plan to the residents of the Northwest Territories?

I had asked the Minister about questions in terms of the awareness campaign. Up until last year when I went to the booth, I didn’t really know too much about it, and I did a lot of work in the health promotion area.

Once again, I’d like to ask the Minister if there are any programs that offer education and awareness in the Northwest Territories to the residents of the Northwest Territories that make them understand about the cheek swabs and getting into the database, and becoming a donor for the stem cell bone marrow transplant donor list.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to recognize a wonderful constituency assistant, Maia Lepage, who is also here chaperoning two of our Pages for the week. She is doing double duty this week.

At this time I would also like to recognize Mr. Ernie Bernhardt, who has been an ambassador, innovator and teacher of arctic sports throughout the circumpolar region of the world.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Last summer I was very fortunate to attend a Relay for Life here in Yellowknife and I ended up walking for a bit there. While I was walking for the cause, I ended up upon this booth where we had some volunteers that were looking to sign up volunteers for donations of stem cell donors. I was very fortunate. I did the cheek swab and got my name into the database.

About a week later, it was very coincidental, but I ran into a nurse who had asked me if the NWT was doing anything in terms of stem cell research or stem cell donor campaigns, mainly because there was a young...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So the awarded contract to the Charlotte Vehus was $1.459 million and the Beaufort-Delta Health and Social Services Authority was the authority running specific programs for the Charlotte Vehus Home, or was it Charlotte Vehus running those programs and Beaufort-Delta covered them up, and now that Beaufort-Delta is in debt because they were kind of supplementing the Charlotte Vehus Home when Charlotte… Can I just get that clarity?