Julie Green

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I know there are going to be people who are disappointed to hear that. The needs for homecare are needs I hear often from my constituents. I have a lot of elderly people in my constituency, and what they ask me is: how have homecare services improved and how will they improve? So what does the Minister suggest I say in response to those questions? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I will just finish this section with a comment, and the comment is that I recognize that there is a difference between the department and the authority, and that the two are defining their roles and their relationship to one another. When it comes to this business plan, we only have the opportunity to talk to and have accountability with the department, so there is a missing link here with accountability with the authority. There needs to be some consideration given about how we as Regular Members provide oversight of the authority as the largest entity funded...

Thank you. I'm looking forward to more detail on that. Now, I have a couple of questions on homecare services. We have been told that there is a homecare study that's been undertaken. Could the Minister please update us on the progress of that study? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I wonder, then, for example, how audits work in this process. Is there going to be a regime of regular audits based on the quality assurance policies? How broad are these policies going to be? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I'm talking about the caregiver program. Is this not in this section? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, when we spoke about the business plan for this department during the business plan meetings in November, there was some discussion about quality assurance and the potential of making a division of quality assurance within the department. Could the Minister please update us on the progress towards this action? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you to the Minister for his responses. Nothing further.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I realize that the previous program attempted to serve both populations. We have seniors in both populations. So a program that serves only one group of needs and not the other group of needs is necessarily going to be incomplete. I caution the Minister that, if he chooses to serve one group and not another group, there will be lots of questions from myself and others about why one group has been left out. I don't know if he wants to respond to that? Thank you.

It is my understanding that the additional staff relieve the Public Guardian when she is unavailable because of training or annual leave. It is not my understanding that there is any more than one social worker working in that office at any given time. Can the Minister please confirm that?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, when the standing committee reviewed the business plan, we made a recommendation that the department look at developing a safe house pilot project so that communities that don't have family violence shelters, which is most of the communities in the NWT, would have a place that women and children, primarily women and children, could flee in the event that they needed to for their safety. I'm wondering if the Minister has given any consideration to developing this idea along with the NWT Housing Corporation? We thought that it could be dual-purpose; it could...