Julie Green

Of those people who currently live at Woodland Manor, none are from Fort Resolution and none are from Kakisa, but four are from Fort Providence. It turns out that you can be in long-term care in the NWT wherever you want to be in long-term care, so while there are people in Woodland Manor who are not from Hay River, such as the person from Inuvik, and from Fort Smith and from Fort Simpson, likewise, there are people from Hay River who are in long-term care facilities in other parts of the NWT. This is a personal choice that they can make based on where their supports and their families are...

It is my understanding that the consultation on the new bed projections is about to begin next month with, in fact, a trip to Hay River to talk to people there about the findings and to verify those numbers on the ground. We have not done that in advance. The study that was done was done by the Bureau of Statistics. They are not using qualitative information; they are using quantitative information about the size of the population, the health of the population, where they live, and so on and so forth. That is not the kind of document that we would normally expect them to consult on. We just...

Just to provide some numbers for turnover, this is for March 31, 2020, the turnover rate at the NWT Health and Social Services Authority was 15 percent. For the GNWT as a whole it was 13.2 percent. Our turnover rate at the health authority is on par with the government as a whole. The NTHSSA does not offer retention bonuses at this point. All the compensation and benefits that nurses and health professionals earn are part of the current collective agreement with the UNW. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thank you to the Member for Hay River South for that question. What has changed is a greater amount of data about actual use has allowed us to quantify the age and stage of the people who are entering long-term care facilities. We have actual information to rely on. In 2015, those were truly projections based on bed ratios for age. What we have now is actual versus projected. That is why those two numbers are different, what was required in 2015 and what was required in 2020. Thank you.

The Northwest Territories Health and Social Services system has created a human resource development plan. They've done that with the Department of Finance, and it's my understanding that exit surveys will be reviewed as a potential action item in this area so that we can provide the kind of information that the Member is talking about and gain a greater understanding of why nurses do choose to leave.

My expectation is that the Emerging Wisely plan will be revised, and as the Member for Great Slave suggested, it will be a living document. There are so many variables that go into the CPHO's decision about risk assessment that it needs to be a living document, and it will be a living document. Putting a firm timeline on when we're going into phase 3 is very difficult to do, especially as the country now looks at locking down in other places because of the emergence of variants. Certainly, the idea of looking at phase 3 is to get ourselves ready for fewer restrictions.

It's important for the Member to understand that machines don't work without the people to operate them. In this case, you need respiratory technicians to operate ventilators. We have enough supply for the number of emergency beds that we have. We are very fortunate not to have needed that more than a couple of times during this whole outbreak. We are confident that we are securely placed to deal with a COVID outbreak in the event there is one. Thank you.

This is my very first pandemic, and it is for the CPHO, as well. What she's been doing is working with the information that is available at the time. Certainly, Emerging Wisely now looks like an outdated document because so much has happened in the last 10 months or so since it came out. It's my understanding that she is, in fact, reviewing the plan and she plans to update it, and that that work will be with us publicly towards the end of April.

I appreciate the invitation from the Member, and I will ask my staff to work with him on a date. Thank you.

I don't have that level of detail with me, so I will have to get back to the Member.