Glen Abernethy

Thank you. That wasn’t actually one of the agenda items on the last Health Minister’s meetings that was in Banff earlier this summer, but it’s certainly an initiative and certainly an important topic, and I’d be happy to raise it with my territorial counterparts to see if we can get a little bit of a northern wave on this one. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In my Minister’s statement today I spoke about the Med-Response program, and I’m very pleased to have the team that are working on this innovative and exciting project in the House today. I’d like to take this opportunity to recognize them and thank them all for their efforts. First, David Keselman, director of ambulatory care and medical affairs at Stanton; Janie Neudorf, the territorial emergency medical supervisor with Med-Response. We have a couple of emergency medical coordinators: Justin Davi, who is an RN; Carolyn Ridgley, who is an RN; and Vladislav Portnick...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. When the Minister’s Forum on Mental Health and Addictions had their conversations, they heard clearly that programming and services was what people wanted and what people needed. We are looking at putting in a mobile treatment option, which allows us to use different facilities in the Northwest Territories. The important part of any program or of any mental health and addictions facility is the programming that exists within, so we want to make sure we have solid programming for a mobile treatment option that we can go to different communities in different regions and...

Mr. Speaker, we’ve already done that. We’ve streamlined the application process for individuals who are seeking treatment. We normally require residents to go through four counselling sessions, but we acknowledge that clearly sometimes now is the right time. So, we have put in a modified process, an expedited process. An individual would go to their counsellor or other professional that happens to be available to them, and a referral can go to the department and we can have literally 24 hours turn-around time on approval of the application. Through that we’ve been able to direct people into...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Following up on the Mental Health and Addictions Action Plan, we have contracts with four facilities in southern Canada. We also have $1.2 million in the Northwest Territories budget that we’re going to be using for on-the-land programming, and we have gone to the Aboriginal governments to distribute those dollars and we’re looking for plans.

With respect to facilities in the Northwest Territories, what we’re hoping to do is have a mobile treatment option program where we have a program in the Northwest Territories that can go to different regions at different times in...

Mr. Speaker, later today I will table “Building Stronger Families: An Action Plan to Transform Child and Family Services” as well as the formal response to Committee Report 6-17(5). This government is committed to a fundamental shift in how we deliver child and family services in the Northwest Territories. The action plan will guide necessary and transformational changes to improve the overall quality of these services and achieve better outcomes for children and their families when they require services under the Child and Family Services Act.

In the past four years, over 100 recommendations...

Thank you. As I indicated, this was a human error. We have reviewed the processes that were being utilized in that particular office, and we have put in safeguards to make sure that there’s now a process of double-checking the cards and double-checking the data to make sure that anything that is printed on the cards is accurate. So we have actually made the changes to the steps and the protocols on those cards. It should not happen again. Thank you.

The wrong addresses on the card would not give the individuals who received the card the ability to access any of the actual individual’s health care information. Thank you.

As the Department of Health and Social Services, we are happy to work with the community on any proposals they’d like to put forward. Recently I’ve had the opportunity to travel to many communities, and many communities and their leadership actually approached us and said we want to participate, we want to do something in our community, and we’ve had ideas like respite houses or places where individuals can go when they are returning from care, some work that can be done up front. So we’re open to any idea. We’re happy to talk to the leadership in your community. We’re happy to work with the...

I disagree with the Member that there’s nothing in the communities. Throughout the Northwest Territories we have counsellors and many NGOs that do incredible work to support residents. We’ve got communities developing community wellness plans and trying to put in options. We are supporting on-the-land programming that is designed by the people for the people. We do have access in a timely way to southern facilities, and yes, we are looking at mobile treatment.

As I said to the Member from Inuvik, we are a little behind on making progress on the mobile treatment program. We haven’t finalized any...