Glen Abernethy

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...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Travel outside of the Northwest Territories within Canada and outside of Canada is certainly different. The NWT Health Care Plan does cover residents for medically necessary hospital and medical expenses when residents are travelling outside the Northwest Territories and we have reciprocal billing agreements with the different provinces, which actually articulate or dictate what those costs that we’re covering are. We do have an agreement with most of the provinces and territories to direct bill the Department of Health and Social Services for doctor visits and hospital...

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I thank the Member for the comments. I agree with the Member on the need for programs to at least be available to the day shelters, maybe not permanently located in there, but with the Day Shelter in Yellowknife there is space for staff from different departments to actually go in on a regular basis, or as requested, to meet with individuals in the Day Shelter. I agree; I think that’s important. I also know that the proponent is intending to deliver some of their own programs out of there as well. So it is good and I agree fully with the Member.

I will ask the...

Thank you, Mr. Chair We don’t have beds dedicated to withdrawal management anywhere in the Northwest Territories, but we have beds that can be used for withdrawal management. The beds at Stanton aren’t in the psych unit for withdrawal management. They’re actually in the medicine unit. I believe the unit is 12 to 18 beds, but I will confirm the number of beds in the medicine unit. When individuals need medical withdrawal in the Northwest Territories, we have beds in Inuvik and we have beds in Stanton that can be used for those purposes.

I don’t have that information at my fingertips, but I will commit to getting that information to the Member. I will remind the Member that there is community wellness money available to all the communities and Tulita, by way of example, did receive $156,880 to run programs that are designed for the people of Tulita by the people of Tulita. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Chair, our challenge in this fiscally tight environment that we are all currently in is the cost of putting infrastructure in place, which will spend a vast majority of its time empty, is difficult, but we hear the communities loud and clear, all communities in the Northwest Territories who wish to have their residents as they’re going through the dying process who wish to be in home. We want to be able to support them to stay in their homes, including communities such as Deline. We want to make sure that our staff have the knowledge, skills and ability that they require in order to put...

Earlier in the Member’s statement, he talked about communities and working together and that everybody needs to work together to solve this problem. We have the Aboriginal health and community wellness division of the Department of Health and Social Services who’s worked with every community in the Northwest Territories to develop a comprehensive community wellness plan. These community wellness plans do have some common themes. Housing is often one, mental health and addictions is often another. We have given money to every community in the Northwest Territories to pursue these initiatives...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yesterday I actually talked in some detail about the medical travel modernization, and the Medical Travel Policy has gone to the Standing Committee on Social Programs who has given it back to us with a number of comments and whatnot. We’ve started to make those changes and we’re going to be submitting that to Cabinet for consideration. Once it’s approved, we will have the foundation document, which is the base Medical Travel Policy. Of that, based on discussions I’ve had with committee earlier, there’s going to be a number of pillars that connect on to that Medical Travel...

Mr. Chair, as I have already indicated, some of the training that is ongoing around non-violent crisis intervention, security staff is involved. They are also involved in the second level of the non-violent crisis intervention training which actually has a larger component around some of the restraint protocols and how to do it safely and effectively.

Stanton has been working closely with the security agency. Effective Monday morning, there’s going to be different security officers in the facility with additional training from their current employers – one additional with a higher level of...