Julie Green

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have a Return to Oral Question asked by the Member for Nunakput on March 10, 2021, regarding medevac services and medical escorts. From January 1, 2020, to December 31, 2020, there were 305 air ambulance transports from the Beaufort-Delta; 68 percent were sent to Inuvik Hospital, 29 percent were sent to Stanton Hospital, and 3 percent went to Edmonton.

Escort data is not available. It is tracked by the air ambulance contractors. In general, non-patients are not permitted on the plane, but an escort may be allowed if the patient is under 19 or if interpretation services...

Yesterday, I tabled the Bureau of Statistics study on the long-term care bed projections, and I also tabled the department's response to that study. Both of those are on the Legislative Assembly website, and of course, they are public documents available to everyone to look at. Thank you.

I don't think I can make a commitment that's that specific right now, but yesterday, I had down here the seniors' planning study, which identifies how many seniors are in each NWT community over 60 and outlines different housing options for them. This is an NWT Housing Corporation document from the 18th Assembly. I know that the Minister responsible for the Housing Corporation is very engaged with the idea of providing more seniors' housing, but I don't know where that plan is going next. I know that the facility in Fort Good Hope was the end of a series of facilities like it built around the...

I don't provide direction of the kind that the Member has discussed to the CPHO. She is a medical doctor. She has specialized training to assess the risk and decide how to respond to it. We do meet often. We have a committee of Cabinet that is related to COVID. We have specific meetings that involve myself, the Premier, and the Minister of Finance, and so we discuss issues at play. At the end of the day, we provide our input, but we are not in a position to direct her to open borders, to produce a plan, to reduce self-isolation to seven days. Those are not options that are available to us, for...

I appreciate the opportunity to clarify here, as well. In fact, what took place in Tsiigehtchic was a pilot program to train local community members as first responders beginning in 2019. The good news about this pilot program is that 16 community members did receive emergency response training. That work, however, has not progressed from that stage. It is in the health Department's work plan to engage with MACA to discuss next steps on how we can build on this pilot, and the next steps are due by September of this year.

Yes. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I am sure the Member can appreciate, with 33 different communities, there are a number of different ways of getting there. One possibility is local emergency service providers, such as the fire department or the RCMP. In some places, there are ground transportation contracts that are available through a competitive bid. In some cases, community governments provide that service, and in some cases, in fact, people do it themselves with whatever equipment they have available. Thank you.

I am not sure what is possible in terms of having public health on call to a greater extent than they are now, but that is certainly something I can enquire about and get back to the Member with. Thank you.

The department is always working with new parents to understand what they need and how we could better support them. That is a core part of our mandate. We do not need to be directed to find out how they are feeling. This is the ongoing work of the department. We, of course, could always offer more services and deliver them in different ways, and so we are interested in looking at our prenatal and post-natal education programming and delivery and making sure that it is as effective as can be, that not only is it effective but that it is grounded in traditional knowledge and presents a...

As I've said previously in this House, phase 2 of the midwifery program does not have funding in the current budget. Thank you.

The plan is now four years old. We have committed to reviewing it. We have committed to costing out the remainder of the five recommendations, and we have said that we will provide that information by June of 2021.