Glen Abernethy

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank the Member for promoting the importance of safety in our health and social services workplace. I’d also like to take this opportunity to acknowledge just how incredibly important this issue is not only at Stanton but for staff in all of our facilities across the entire Northwest Territories. I totally agree that our workers deserve a safe workplace that is free from the threat of physical assault. At the same time, we need to ensure that our patients and our clients deserve to receive treatment in a caring and supportive...

There isn’t a specific fund for that but there are different types of training that are available to all residents of the Northwest Territories. Things like First Aid, Medical First Aid, and Mental Health First Aid. There are a number of programs that are available. But as far as specific palliative care training, no, there isn’t. But we do have some dollars in our budget that allow staff to put in some overtime to provide some one-on-one support to families and the patient if needed.

Just a reminder, this is palliative care for short periods for certain medical conditions. It certainly can’t...

That will give us the ability to insert it into the capital planning process, which the Member does know takes a bit of time. I do hear the Member clearly around palliative care. We want to make sure, where possible, individuals can be supported for palliative care in the communities. While we’re doing the planning study and we’re getting the information which we can have further discussion on, we are making sure that our staff are trained so that the communities can support palliative care where medically possible in our communities in individual’s homes for short periods of time. In Deline...

The initial work being done by the contractor is going to be done, I believe, at the end of March, at which point we will start putting together the results and how we’re going to move forward. Of course, this is a consensus system, so we will be sharing those results and having further discussion with the Members as the report comes in. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you. I went into some detail on this when we were in front of Committee of the Whole, but at this point the working group has actually gone out to a number of communities in the Northwest Territories. What we’re trying to do is get a small community, a large community and a remote community so we can get a variety of different inputs and opinions. We’re also looking at all the data that’s been gathered on medical travel over many, many, many years. So that’s been thrown into the mix. There will be some discussions with different stakeholders and groups in Yellowknife. They’ve also been...

Not at this point. We do know that there are a significant number of organizations out there that can provide that insurance to residents of the Northwest Territories. I know, when I travel, I go to the Royal Bank and I get the travellers insurance just in case something happens to me when I’m in the South, and I think it costs me $75 or less a month. So I would encourage people to go to one of the many, many providers.

I would also like to take this opportunity to encourage Members to include this information on their websites, in their newsletters, in any tweeting they happen to be doing and...

We do a number of things to make people aware and encourage them to get medical travel or travellers insurance when they travel within country. For the record we’ll say it again, get travellers insurance when you’re travelling outside of the Northwest Territories and Canada. I’d strongly encourage Members to include it on their websites, in their newsletters or any other way that they can.

In the meantime, the department is doing a number of things. We place ads in newspapers, social media, we have a whole bunch of brochures that are available in health centres as well as in travel agencies. I...

We actually do conduct a number of performance or satisfaction surveys throughout the Northwest Territories on different functions. I can’t say for sure whether we have a specific one in the Beaufort-Delta for home care, but I will check and I will confirm that with the Member at a later date. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As the Member mentioned in his statement, Our Elders, Our Community has been released as a framework for taking action to support seniors and elders throughout the Northwest Territories. Under that document we are taking a number of actions, including developing a number of action plans. One of the action plans is about respite home care for seniors throughout the Northwest Territories, which will benefit all residents in the Northwest Territories including those in Fort McPherson and Aklavik.

The Member has mentioned a couple of times that he has concerns about the...

None of the other provinces or jurisdictions actually provide ambulance services for individuals who are outside of their jurisdictions. Once again, we only cover medically necessary treatment while people are out of the territory. If they go down for procedures that aren’t covered here, we wouldn’t be covering those either.

This is something that’s consistent across the country. We don’t actually provide ground ambulance services here in the Northwest Territories for residents, either, and most of the costs that come from ground ambulance are billed directly to our residents. Most people, a...