Glen Abernethy

It is a negotiation. Some of the neighbours have put forward some principles or concepts that, obviously, some of the partners are having some difficulty with. We are committed to working with our partners to make this happen. Yes. There has been a negotiation. There is room to get this agreement in place.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. That is why the bill is in front of us. That is what we are hoping to accomplish and do. We want to get this done as badly as the Members want it done, and we will get it done as quickly as we can. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

The Member and I actually had a conversation on this when he brought it to my attention that the RNs aren't spending a full day. I have already committed to the Member, and I will commit to the Member in this House, that I have directed the department to work with the authority to make sure that our RNs are spending the full hours in the community, either seven-and-a-half or eight. We have to work out some details on that. It may require a little bit of overtime. It may require the RN staying overnight so that they can provide certain hours on one day and certain hours on another day, but I am...

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.

When a child is under the care and custody of the CFS system, the director is in a sense the parent of the child, the de facto parent, and the director does have the ability to provide some responsibilities in this area through child protection workers within the system.

The practice expectation when a child or a youth does go missing is that the child protection working is to take all measures required to locate the child. This includes, obviously, things like questioning last-known contacts of the child or youth; seeking out possible locations that the child or youth have visited or regularly...

I did have an opportunity to speak about this exact issue earlier in this sitting. In the new Stanton, we do have the ability to prepare country foods. We've put in flash freezers and other tools that will actually help us prepare. Unfortunately, we're not going to be able to go live with this new program at Stanton until July. Right now, we're working to help train up our contractors who provide food services, to make sure that they are aware of how to do this. They will be visiting places like the Yukon hospital that actually already does a really good job in this area, and we are looking...

This is a good question, an it's important to note that every resident in the Northwest Territories, in fact, every resident of Canada, has a right to a second opinion if they're not happy with the information or the prognosis or the diagnosis that has been provided to them by their healthcare practitioner.

Obviously, in a smaller community, sometimes it can be more complicated because there may only be one or two community health nurses or NP's available, so they will have to come out of community. We don't provide medical travel support and those types of services for somebody who is seeking...

Yes, absolutely. To help us with that, we are actually putting in a new information system. The price tag on that is $1.55 million. It's the community counselling information system. That is going to help us track that information. Until that is fully in place, we will be doing our best to collect that data because we, like the Member, like all Members, we want to make evidence-based decisions in this area, so we will be tracking that information, as well.