Julie Green

We received notice from one Indigenous government approximately a year ago that they were interested in beginning negotiations. We received notice from a second Indigenous government about a month ago. Neither of these conversations have reached the stage that the Member is talking about here, where we are negotiating a tripartite agreement. What we have done proactively as a department is adopted two new practice standards based on the federal act so that all children and families in the NWT have the benefit of these provisions, even before these agreements are put into place.

The first new...

Yes. Thank you. Not in my time as health Minister. The FPT tables are predominantly preoccupied with the pandemic. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Could you please ask Mr. Elkin?

Thank you. I will ask Ms. Mathison to answer this question, please.

All services remain available now, as they were before the pandemic started. The travel restrictions have not impacted residents' ability to travel to Alberta, to the Cross Cancer Institute for Cancer Treatment, although people may have decided not to go because they were concerned about the number of infectious cases in Edmonton. There is regular communication between the Alberta Cross Cancer Institute and NWT residents, and that is facilitated by medical oncology and haematology oncology. These are two cancer speciality clinics that continue to be offered virtually at Stanton Territorial...

No, I do not believe they have. Thank you.

Thank you. My thought is that we will be able to get a better sense of this when this fiscal year ends, and we will have a year's worth of data. We know that there have been some successes as you have mentioned, but we also know that the digital divide is pretty deep in the NWT. It'll be interesting to see how all of that works out. It is a very expensive program. Of course, NIHB pays for Indigenous and related people. The GNWT pays for everyone else, and the cost there is $45 million. If there were ways to make that cost come down, I think we'd all be doing the happy dance.

I will take that as a comment. Thank you.

I don't have information about what it was, but I do have information about what it is. Right now, the wait time from a positive FIT test to colonoscopy through the Territorial Colorectal Cancer Screening program in the Beaufort-Delta is approximately 88 days, so let's say three months. Our target for improvement is to ensure that patients are seen more quickly than that, and we are now working on a pilot project that will help us to identify where we can make improvements to reduce the amount of time that it takes to go from a positive test to a colonoscopy.

Yes. Thank you. I will refer that question to the deputy minister, please.