Julie Green

Yes, thank you, Mr. Speaker. I've had versions of this question recently, and I would like to confirm that medical travel only is paid when the patient has been referred by an NWTbased physician for additional care. And so somebody who decides to jump in their vehicle and drive to Edmonton for a diagnostic or treatment services would be doing so at their own expense. Thank you.

Yes, thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we have conducted or the nurses association has conducted a couple of surveys to find out why it is that people are not coming here and not staying here. And certainly, we have heard the cost of living here is an issue; separation from family in the south is an issue; the burnout, which we've all heard about in the healthcare professions, is an issue. The labour pool is smaller than it was. And we've also heard that while we have been a generous employer in the past, the gap between what we offer and what's offered in the south has closed in the last...

Yeah, I neglected also to introduce Ms. Jeanette Demerse who is visiting us in the House today. Thank you.

In favour.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I heard the Member say in his statement that our health was at risk, and I would just like to say that, in fact, we have the resources to cope with the health care demand as it exists now, both at Stanton and in the regional centres. We have protocols in place that enable us to surge with staff and beds to meet the needs of patients and also to assist the telehealth medical professionals in the regional centres and in the health care centres to treat the residents who come their way. So at this point, while our resources are thin, we do believe that we are...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, my thanks to the Member for highlighting this area. Yes, indeed, we are keen to recruit and retain healthcare professionals. We have developed a health human resources workforce plan, which will be made public next month. It's a threeyear plan that looks at a variety of measures to bring to bring healthcare professionals to the Northwest Territories and to have them to have them live here over the long term.

Not only that, Mr. Speaker, I have been successful in persuading my federal colleagues at the FPT health ministers' table to create a national health human...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, today in the gallery is my partner Janice McKenna, and her eldest brother Peter McKenna from Calgary. I'd like to welcome them to the House. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I want to say that apprehension is always the last resort. And so at this point, we do have these service agreements available that family preservation workers, social workers can sign with families to ensure that their basic needs are being met. I don't know if it would be useful for these workers to have a another way of accessing money, whether that would improve the service delivery, the timing of it, and so on. To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure what the process is of getting money now and how onerous that is to meet a specific deadline. So I will...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I recognize that that the Member is duly concerned about children being removed from their homes where poverty rather than parental neglect is the primary issue. That is something that we're aware of. And we do have voluntary service agreements and brief service agreements which will assist families with their with their needs for shelter, food, and so on so that the children are not removed because of poverty.

This is obviously a systemic issue. It's a question of an inequity within the system. Some children have much more than others and that shouldn't...

Yes, thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the child and family services system has been through a complete overhaul since the second of the OAG reports was tabled in 2018. And we created the quality improvement plan that the Member referenced which is now in its in its last days. We are going to create a bridge plan which will move over both the completed and incomplete actions that came out of the quality improvement plan.

We also as as the Member knows, we are going to revise the Child and Family Services Act to align our legislation with the federal legislation that came into effect in...