Glen Abernethy

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have directed the department to pull that information together. It hasn’t been pulled together at this point, but we will get it to the Member at our earliest convenience. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

What we want to do is provide quality care to all the residents of the Northwest Territories. We want to make sure that our residents have access. I’m not going to presuppose the finding of the review of the ISDM, but we are looking for ways to improve the services that are provided in all of our communities. As I’ve indicated, we will be doing that review. I don’t have a timeline in front of me today, but I will get back to the Member with a bit more clarity on how long that review is going to take. I’m really interested in getting input from the Member as well as committee as we move forward...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to recognize a couple of different individuals. First I’d like to recognize Dr. Ewan Affleck who I mentioned earlier as the champion of electronic medical records, and he was recently awarded the Order of Canada. I’d like to thank him for his commitment to improving health care services for the Northwest Territories.

I’d also like to recognize another important group of individuals, our Anti-Poverty Advisory Committee, who is helping us with the development of the territorial response to the Anti-Poverty Framework. They are Chief Minnie Letcher of the Liidlii K...

Residents who are required to go south for treatment and/or assessment at the direction of a physician or another health care provider in the Northwest Territories are eligible for medical travel. They would go through the medical travel office, who would arrange the travel, once it’s been approved accordingly. We aren’t requiring individuals to pay for their approved treatments up front, so I’m confused by this one. It shouldn’t be happening, and as I said, I would certainly be happy to hear the details and make sure that we correct it. Thank you.

This gap in the 16 to 18-year-olds is what I think the Member is alluding to. Right now, when a youth turns 16, they are not required to receive care under the Child and Family Services Act. They can, in a sense, opt out and opt out of foster care. But, at the same time, they can opt in and they can volunteer to stay within the system and continue to receive the supports of the foster parent who will continue to receive support until they’re 18. But this is an optional thing. I believe, and I think the 16th Assembly clearly articulated, that we have an obligation as de facto guardians for...

Thank you. This is where it gets really complicated, as I’ve said. If we’ve got a child entering the system and we want to work with the family to keep the child in the community and if the grandparents are willing to, through the foster screening assessment they are going to get the financial support they need to provide for those kids. But as we heard clearly when we went out to the communities during the Child and Family Services review, not all kids are entering the system, but we still need to find a way to support them.

This is something that was recommended to the department to look into...

As I’ve already indicated, we are trying to deal with it on a more holistic level. We are working on promoting healthy living, healthy activity and healthy eating. We are doing that in cooperation with Education, Culture and Employment and MACA. Obviously, we would like to do a little bit more. I think it’s important to educate the people on the differences of natural sugar occurring in food and white sugar, which is more of the problem than the sugar naturally occurring in food.

We need to do a better job. We are going to put something together so that we can help people understand the...

Mr. Speaker, off the top of my head, the only one that I could think of would actually be potential smuggling and that would be something that we would have to consider as well. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I believe it was just a couple of days ago that Member Dolynny talked about some of the statistics with respect to smoking and that we are actually finally seeing a bit of a decrease in smoking rates in the Northwest Territories. Having said that, we still have higher rates than pretty much everywhere else in the country and obviously more needs to be done.

We do have some wonderful programs. We’ve all heard of Don’t Be a Butthead, and there are a number of programs out there as well. I know Mr. Moses actually referenced a number of them the other day.

Obviously, we are...

It’s an intriguing idea and then it could… Obviously, if something like that existed, it could stretch to sugar, it could stretch to other things as well. I don’t know if we actually have the capacity to do something like that, but I would certainly be willing to have some conversations with the department and some more discussions with committee to see what options exist. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.