Glen Abernethy

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Certainly, I am planning to share them with standing committee. If standing committee wishes to have a meeting, I am always happy to do so. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Yes, please.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. As the Member knows, when it comes to dementia, we have one facility to provide services to our residents who have dementia. Obviously, that facility is full, and we are always looking for ways to support our people the best that we can. The long-term care facility in Norman Wells is certainly going to help us with that.

With respect to dialysis, I think that everybody in this building is aware of the pressures that we have under dialysis and the work that we are doing. Having said that, we are not looking at expanding our chairs right at this point. We are looking at...

Mr. Chair, originally that's how we were hoping to obtain the $2.4 million in savings. We have done some more analysis; we have done some more digging. We wanted to make sure that we didn't adversely affect many of our residents. Most of the co-pay comes from insurance providers and others, so we've done some tweaking around that. I'm in the process of trying to finalize that work now. I met with committee a number of months ago, where we showed some scenarios. We've taken feedback from committee to make some changes to what we were proposing. We're very close to being ready to come back to...

Not at this time, Mr. Chair. We need to get that report in. We need to have that report analyzed. We need to make sure that our design is getting maximum benefit for the dollars that we do have.

If it turns out that the report suggests that we need to make significant new investments in this area, recognizing that this is the Non-Insured Health Benefits and not covered in most jurisdictions, then we are prepared to begin that work to build the business case that it is necessary to approach FMBS and seek additional funds in the future. There is still a lot of work before we will be ready to do...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. It is to help us all and together to define the types of and scope of services that are provided in the shelters and what we are able to provide some financial support to so that we have some consistency across the territory and we are able to fund based on a consistent application. I think the Member knows, for many years, we have been funding the shelters, but there really hasn't been any sort of set criteria on why one shelter gets X dollars and the other one does not. So that is where we are working on, is finding something that will help us set sort of some...

I, like Members in this House, have heard time and time again that the NWT health and social services system is not safe for Indigenous residents, nor does it account for Indigenous culture or healing needs. That is why, for the past 16 months, staff at the department have worked with Indigenous Northerners to hear their experiences, concerns, and aspirations for the NWT health and social services system. This included meeting with regional wellness councils, including the Beaufort-Delta, where council members had the opportunity to voice their community concerns about the health and wellbeing...

Significant new funding has been available to homecare beginning in 2017-2018. $2.5 million annually was included as an investment within the Government of the Northwest Territories. We also have $7.4 million for homecare over a 10-year period that we got from the federal government. This new funding is helping health and social services system enhance home and community care programs and services for clients across the Northwest Territories. Some of the ways that we have been able to do that is the establishment of 14 new homecare positions, as well as training for them, equipment, supplies...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. With me today are Christina Brownlee, who is legislative counsel, and Gary Toft, the director of policy, legislation, and communications with Health and Social Services.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I am pleased to introduce Bill 32, the Naturopathic Profession Statutes Amendment Act. The Legislative Assembly passed the Health and Social Services Profession Act to enable the Government of the Northwest Territories to regulate numerous different professions under one legislative framework and later amended the legislation to strengthen competency requirements for professionals.

Work has been under way to draft professional regulations to bring the Health and Social Services Profession Act into force. This includes regulations for three groups of professionals; the...