Daryl Dolynny

I’m encouraged by what I’m hearing and I’m hoping that the Minister will notify Members and committee if and when we have that as a 24 hour service for our residents.

Statistics that were given to us last year indicated that the no-show rate for family physicians was a whopping 13.8 percent. That means 13.8 residents out of 100 were missing their family doctor visits. I see here speciality clinics are now a separate category, and with speciality clinics it usually goes hand in hand with a lot more expensive services. Do we know what our no-show rates are for our speciality clinics?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As a territory, we struggle with mental illness every day, and although we see some great initiatives nationally on working together to create a stigma-free Canada, we are still failing.

While everyone in this room struggles to improve the quality of care while reducing the costs of our health care system, we seem to be missing the point. That is, the overwhelming evidence that access to mental health care in the NWT is poor.

Nationally, one in five people with depression get appropriate treatment, and we know this number is much higher in the North. Shockingly...

What would the budget be for that service?

Thank you, Madam Chair. This is a relatively new section for committee. This is probably the first time committee has had a chance to digest the way it’s been categorized and some of the new, I guess, descriptions within this activity summary, so I’ll start off with this. To the department: What was the rationalization for doing it? What was the desired outcome? Then, in responding to that, maybe if I could get a breakdown in terms of physicians outside the NWT and specialty clinics, sorry, physicians outside the NWT and out-of-town hospitals. If I could get more of a descriptor than we have...

We do get the money. That’s a clearly broad response to a question which I believe needs some due consideration. If we’ve just heard correctly, if we’re five months behind in billing on a rolling average of money, again, I’m not going to do all the math here, but I know if it is around $7 million and if that rolling average is five months, I would venture to say that the amount of interest that we’re being held accountable with the taxpayers having to leverage, would be around $350,000. It becomes a significant amount of money over the course of the year if the taxpayer of the NWT is required...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just a couple quick questions on this activity on the revenue. As the Minister is aware, we’re currently doing the Health and Social Services Professions Act. This act is currently in committee and I’m sure will be coming back to the House. That said, with the potential regulation of a number of new professions that will be affected in this fiscal year, I’m surprised to see that the amount of professional licensing fees has remained the same from the revised of last year to this year.

Does the department not consider the fact that there will be a lift in registration fees...

Thank you, committee. We’ll commence after a short break.

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Good afternoon, committee. I’d like to call Committee of the Whole to order. What is the wish of committee? Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Considering what we’ve just heard from the Minister that the federal government has paused further activity on this file, can the Minister conceive the possibility of a framework agreement or an MOU with all stakeholders on the land of the management of East Arm and could this be done during the life of this Assembly?

I appreciate the Minister and the administration having that dialogue.

Can the Minister indicate to the House – as he indicated northern tools – what northern tools, if any, could be used to mitigate and administer this land being considered? Thank you.