Glen Abernethy

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to just follow up on my colleague’s questions just after the Minister of Health and Social Services. I would like to thank the Minister for her previous responses as well. To be sustainable, any Midwifery Program needs to have at least two midwives, otherwise the workload would be just too over-consuming. In order to determine the capacity in a business case, whether or not a Midwifery Program is feasible in a community, we need to understand the number of births or the number of pregnancies in a community. Has the department begun the process or have we in the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Your committee would like to report progress. Mr. Speaker, I move that the report of Committee of the Whole be concurred with. Mahsi.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are for the Minister of Health and Social Services.

Could the Minister in cooperation with the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, please provide the complete statistics on admission and graduation rates for the Aurora College Nursing Program from 1999 to present?

Please identify the affirmative action status of these students and graduates by year.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I think ultimately we both want the same things. I agree with what the Minister is saying. We need to have services available for people in communities because midwifery does not only provide birthing services, they also provide pre- and postnatal care. What I am concerned about is maximizing dollars. If we have a community that only has three or four pregnancies a year, it does not justify midwifery services. I want the Minister to provide me with some of the data on what justifies, what level of pregnancies justifies a business case which does involve money and it...

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Next on my list is Mr. Beaulieu.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Just for the record, I believe the committee does have an open mind but we do want to see action. A lot of it is back-and-forth debate on points. It’s not really adding much value and it’s not really helping the people of the Northwest Territories, from my point of view and from her point of view. No question.

Mr. Chairman, in past years I remember seeing a bit of a summary from the department. I think it might have been your department. It might have been a different department outlining the NGOs that we are supporting and which ones are multiyear and which ones are more one-time. Could you please get us a current update on the NGOs you are funding, how much you are funding them and which ones have multiyear funding, just for our information? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I would have thought given that these responses and the information and action items, if you actually read through them, they do seem vague. They’re not always clear. I’ll just give you a real quick example.

We asked the government to mandate prevention and early intervention and include a presumption of prevention and early intervention in the principles of the act. They responded by saying the presumption of prevention and early intervention is implicit. This is what I talked about in my Member’s statement. We read the act. We’ve identified the sections that they’ve identified in their...

Mr. Chairman, government response, government budget, Health and Social Services’ responsibility, so we look forward to your commitment to getting that information but we are talking about the budget now. We need to know what is happening before we move forward.

The last thing I want to ask on the Child and Family Services Act is actually a question that I stood up to ask during oral questions. I completely blanked on it. As soon as I sat down, I remembered what the question was so I will ask it now. The response indicates that you guys will be doing a strategic plan. I asked you during...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I’d like to talk about the response of the Standing Committee on Social Programs report of the review of child and family services that was recently tabled by the Minister of Health and Social Services.

I’m happy that the report was tabled earlier than suspected. I was a little surprised, but I’m happy that it’s here because it gives an opportunity to talk about it early in this session, especially when the health budget is before us.

I have mixed feelings on the response, Mr. Speaker. There’s a lot of good stuff in the response, a lot of positive direction that...