Julie Green

Yes, thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the Member is right. I certainly would like to help his communities to gain or regain their mental health. I said that I would inquire about sending a travelling team to Tuktoyaktuk. I'm not sure about the staffing levels off the top of my head in his other communities and whether they are as shortstaffed as they are in Tuk. But that's something that I will inquire about.

At the end of the day, we want people to be living their best lives, and we're prepared to support that in whatever way we can. And if that's a travelling team while there aren't...

Yes, thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, thank you to the Member for that question. There's no question that the pandemic has been very hard on the mental health of the whole population. People at different times have been stressed; they've been lonely; they've been anxious; they've been worried. And we have tried to respond by providing counselling in a virtual setting if COVID restrictions are in place, or facetoface if not. I realize that Tuktoyaktuk is short a couple of counsellors. And the primary reason for that is because there's no housing for them, and so people have been offered...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I wish to table the following two documents:

Follow-up letter to Oral Question 79119(2), obstetrics care; and, Follow-up letter to Oral Question 84919(2), healthcare wait times. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Yes, thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I don't believe it's a guarantee, but I will inquire and return with that information. Thank you.

Yes, thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, this is obviously a crucial area. We don't have healthcare if we don't have human health resources. So because of the large vacancy rate in our health workforce and because of our mandate commitment to increase the size of the resident healthcare workforce, we've developed a threeyear health and social services system human resources plan, which will be made public in April. Some of the work is already underway that is laid out in that plan, including exploring financial incentives, improved access to training, ongoing outreach to understand the issues...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So it's true that early in the pandemic some surgeries were postponed. And during this most recent outbreak, the Omicron outbreak, there was a period of about three weeks where Stanton again postponed elective surgeries, especially if they'd require a hospital stay because they were trying to preserve the hospital beds for people who were admitted because of COVID. But these surgeries have since resumed, and following this most recent outbreak, there's a triage of the elective surgery list going on with prioritization and scheduling happening as soon as possible. So I...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and thank you to the Member for that question. This is a topic that is on the mind of many residents of the NWT.

We are aware that people haven't had the same access to services that they may have had in the past for a variety of reasons. We've had staff who have been sick or in isolation. We have staff who've been committed to the pandemic effort. And so the result is in some cases we have fallen behind. The NTHSSA is right now working to identify areas where we need to enhance our capacity or bring new resources to focus on developing a plan to catch up for things like...

Yes, thank you, Mr. Speaker, and I thank the Member for that question. Just to reiterate, there is no mandatory vaccine policy.

We did see people who were vaccinated contract Omicron variant and, in some cases, those people have been hospitalized and in some cases they have been part of the unfortunate number of people who have died. But generally speaking, the vaccine presents greater protection for the severity of illness and outcomes to people who choose to take it, particularly if they take the booster shot as well. And vaccination is an important tool that we consider in making decisions...

Yes, thank you, Mr. Speaker, and thank you for the question. We are going to have health capacities set up knowing that this disease is not going to go away and that outbreaks are likely to continue. So the CPHO will be actively monitoring COVID as she has throughout the last two years. She will continue to do that and give us advice on how to deal with the variants as they come along.

As things stand now, what we're looking at is making sure that we have a robust public health response to the endemic portion of the disease, meaning that we have capacity to test, trace, vaccinate, isolate, and...

Yes, thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thank you for the question. I advise the Member to tell his constituents we're working on it. We know the measures that are in place now have resulted in significant disruptions to people's lives, and we want to bring that disruption to an end. As I previously said, we'd be following an evidencedbased decisionmaking process in order to decide when and how to lift restrictions.

The CPHO has already agreed to lift leisure travel restrictions by March 1st, which is a week from tomorrow. She has said she is reviewing further orders and is prepared to make additional...