Glen Abernethy

Mr. Speaker, I wish to table the following document, entitled “NWT Medical Travel Program: Patient-Escort Supports – Report on What We Heard, May 2015.” Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

It’s my understanding that the Town of Hay River actually did have a handivan in place, and for a period of time they did provide services throughout the community for persons with disabilities, including services to Enterprise as well. That service was actually discontinued by the community.

I would strongly encourage the community to continue to have dialogue with the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs around what money they can use that has been allocated already. Unfortunately, the Department of Health and Social Services, as I said, doesn’t have a responsibility for travel of...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Public transportation is the responsibility of the municipalities, and this includes things like the handivan services. At the present time, the GNWT doesn’t have any available funding through the Department of Health and Social Services to support this initiative. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

We are always working with the other departments, sharing technical expertise and information.

With respect to housing, we have occupational therapists who are available to do some assessments for individuals to determine what, if anything, they need in their individual homes, grab bars, ramps, many other things. So we do work with that. The Housing Corp has put in a program – I believe it’s called CARE, but I’m not 100 percent sure and I will confirm that later – where people can actually apply for money to do those ramps. We have occupational therapists and others who can come in and do...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The departments have taken a number of actions to address a number of recommendations that were in that report. The Department of Health and Social Services, as an example, has included a number of the recommendations in many of the different strategies were dealing with, like early childhood development. But I’d be happy to pull together a summary of what we’ve done with respect to each of the action items in the different areas within the department and I will certainly work with the other departments to pull that together.

We probably won’t be able to get that done in...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to thank the mover and seconder for bringing this motion to the floor as well as bringing the important discussion. I’ve listened carefully to all the Members and what I think is clear is that addressing the issues of individuals living with disabilities is a shared responsibility, and clearly we need to work together on solutions, whether that’s government to government or governments working with NGOs or NGOs working together. We must all work together in meaningful partnerships to actually make change and bring about change for people with disabilities.

To...

It’s a shared responsibility across the Government of the Northwest Territories depending on the different portfolios. Housing has a significant number of responsibilities around persons with disabilities and they have been addressing those. As does MACA with communities, as does Health and Social Services, things that we’ve done around the Early Childhood Development Action Plan, work around respite. As the Minister responsible, one of my responsibilities is to share information across the different departments and ensure that they are working towards a common goal, but it doesn’t change the...

Thank you. The Department of Finance has taken the lead on the financing of this particular project as well as some of the monitoring and overseeing.

I do know, without question, that the staff of the Department of Finance did review those audits that were done in other jurisdictions because we wanted to make sure that we did not relive or redo the same mistakes that were done in other jurisdictions, which goes to the comment the Minister of Finance made later about some of the overseeing that’s being done on this particular project, some of the checks and balances that have been put in place....

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In 2011 the Nats’ejee K’eh Board funded an organizational review, which made many observations about the issues at the facility that impacted negatively on programs, clients and staff. We worked closely with the board to try to find some solutions. Unfortunately, they were unable to implement any of the solutions to improve the situation there.

In 2013 the executive director advised that no further intakes should take place due to the risk of client safety in that particular facility. When that happened, we were in no other position than to withdraw funding from that...

Thank you. Here with me today are Debbie DeLancey, the deputy minister on my right; and Derek Elkin, the assistant deputy minister on my left.