Glen Abernethy

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I am pleased to introduce Bill 40: The Smoking and Control Reduction Act. The development of this bill has been the result of significant time and effort by the Department of Health and Social Services and wouldn't have been made possible without the input and contribution from the Standing Committee on Social Development as well as members of the public.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the members of the Standing Committee on Social Development for the time they have taken to ensure that this bill received a comprehensive review. I wish to acknowledge the...

The Member and I have been talking about this particular issue for four years. I would really love to say that they are going to happen, the regulations are going to happen, right away. We did issue drafting instructions in June to the Department of Justice, but, unfortunately, as the Member knows, the individuals who were working on those regulations are the same ones who are helping us move a number of pieces of legislation that are before us today and through the next two weeks through the House. As a result, they did not have the time or the resources to do the regulations immediately...

The document was posted on the Health and Social Services website, and it was also distributed to a number of stakeholders that included the Departments of Municipal and Community Affairs, Environment and Natural Resources, the City of Yellowknife, the Towns of Inuvik and Hay River, funeral providers or the individuals providing those services in each community, and the NWT Association of Communities. Comments, as I indicated, and input were accepted till May 31st, and, from that process, the department did receive two responses, both of which were positive.

Mr. Speaker, yes, there are some standards in place to guide staff in the event of a child or youth who goes missing. One of the standards that we have is based on serious incidents. This standard provides direction to staff to ensure that they take required actions to address a serious incident, that they contact the RCMP where required, that they seek medical attention for a child or youth where required, and provide verbal and written notification to the director.

Serious incidents do have a range that are identified within the standards from 1 to 4, and, as a note, if a child under five...

As a health system and as a government, we have introduced many ways to ensure that our clients and patients are able to receive care in the most appropriate way, which obviously includes in their own language. Our preferred approach would be to have staff interpreters who speak the language of the population that we serve, so different languages in different regions. However, unfortunately, this isn't always possible.

The NWT Health and Social Services Authority has an Indigenous wellness unit that focuses on or ability to deliver care in many languages throughout the Northwest Territories...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I've been talking about quality assurance and quality control within the Territorial Health Authority for a number of years now. This is something that needs to be done. We need to have mechanisms whereby we can hear what the residents are telling us, both good experiences and bad experiences. When they have a bad experience, we need to be able to look into that experience and actually come up with recommendations, how to improve and change.

I did listen very closely to the Member's statement earlier today when he was talking about some of the frustration that his...

Fortunately, in the Northwest Territories there are a lot of passionate individuals who are working outside of government to find solutions in these areas, and we are certainly willing and interested in working with them to provide transitional housing options. Recently, the Social Envelope Committee-of-Cabinet had some in-depth conversations about how we can work together as partner departments to support different initiatives that exist not just in Yellowknife but in communities throughout the Northwest Territories. We have more to learn on what these different organizations are proposing...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Before I answer the question, I just want to correct an unintended oversight from my Minister's statement yesterday. I acknowledged all of the people who have done incredible work to help us with our action plan, but I failed to acknowledge the important work that has been done by the Standing Committee on Social Development. They did their tour of the treatment facilities. They provided a report. We had debate in this House on the report. We agreed with the recommendations. We drafted our draft action plan. Committee did point out to us that it was a little lacking...

Mr. Speaker, last week was Disability Awareness Week in the Northwest Territories, as well as National AccessAbility Week across the country. It is a time to promote inclusion and accessibility in our communities, and to reflect on what we can all do to make sure that everyone is able to contribute to and be a part of community life. With that, I'd like to provide an update on the Government of the Northwest Territories Disability Action Plan 2018/2019 - 2021/2022, which was tabled in October 2018 and is the final deliverable of the Disability Program Review and Renewal Project.

Work is under...

Time is meshing together. I either made a statement on that today or yesterday. I'm pretty sure it was today. The bottom line is, the quality improvement plan is a living document. We're hoping to have the document go live, reckoning that it will continue to evolve over time, but yes, it does and will include these types of things as we move forward. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.