Glen Abernethy

The Member has recently brought that to my attention and we’re working with the Beaufort-Delta to figure out what’s going on with the details of the situation and we will be able to respond back to the Member shortly.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I did have some initial conversations with the Minister of Health and Social Services for Nunavut and the Northwest Territories. They have since stopped being the Ministers of Health and Social Services, so I will follow up with the new Ministers to see if there’s any interest in a pan-territorial approach. Thank you.

There’s a program that we’re supporting called Talking About Mental Illness, which is actually a program that we’re intending to get into the schools, which will encourage people, youth, to talk about mental health issues and we’re anticipating seeing some of the delivery of that this fiscal year. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. As I indicated yesterday, a significant portion of the system funding within the Department of Health and Social Services is actually for the authorities. So, recognizing that the authorities report on criteria and categories that were created by CIHI and the department didn’t, we have moved to a system where our reporting system that’s in front of you now mirrors what’s coming from the authorities and is consistent with CIHI, and this is one of the categories that existed. In previous budgets these dollars would have been in one of the sections where it said “transfers...

Thank you. The dollars actually came in in the ’14-15 fiscal year, which we’re using for the transition and the planning, and it came in by way of a supp in ’14-15. So it will not show as an increase in ’15-16. Thank you.

It would be inappropriate to talk about individual cases. But I can say that we do work with our residents of the Northwest Territories, and when they do have challenges with the NIHB benefits that they’re entitled to receive, we do participate with them. We do work with them by providing the doctors’ notes and everything they need, and those issues do get resolved. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Just to confirm, the Member is talking about the CIHI at this point?

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I have indicated that I’d be happy to go to Tsiigehtchic and have a conversation with the leadership to determine truly what it is that they are specifically asking for and what it is that they think will meet their needs. There are lots of potential options. We ask the question of what can an LPN do within their limited scope of practice, and an LPN scope of practice is significantly less, or it can be significantly less than an RN. What is it we are trying to accomplish? We have looked at other models from other jurisdictions like Alaska where they’ve taken local people...

In this process we don’t want to dictate to any of the communities or regions what project would be appropriate for them. This is a community-driven initiative. So it’s what the community wishes to see and how the community wishes to see it unroll.

As I said to Member Blake yesterday, we’re there to add clinical advice and expertise if they seek it, and if they want some of our people there, we’re willing to participate as well. So if they want a youth program, they can have a youth program. Thank you.

I’m glad the Member’s actually brought this up. Our human resources are significantly the largest driver of costs in the health care system. Our employees are highly trained and compensated accordingly, and there are significant costs there. Overtime is a massive deal. I’ve asked the department, and they’ve already begun the work on doing a complete analysis of overtime usage throughout the Northwest Territories in different authorities. They’ve actually started that work now to help us figure out what, if any, areas are driving overtime to greater degrees than other areas. Trying to dig in to...