Julie Green

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to start for thanking the Member for drawing attention to this Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month. It's a very significant problem all around, but especially in the Beaufort-Delta. She will be pleased to know that the program rolled out as planned in January of 2020. The response rate was low in Paulatuk and Ulukhaktok, so the kits were sent again in November of 2020 to those communities. In total, there were 1,157 FIT kits distributed, and the screening rates in the smaller Beaufort-Delta communities, that is, excluding Inuvik, doubled from 7.9 percent to...

Yes. Thank you. That is a federal program, but the assistant deputy minister will be able to answer. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I would like to refer the question to the deputy minister.

Excuse me, Madam Chair. Could we switch witnesses again, please?

Thank you. I will just say that the hospital services budget is spread through several different categories in this budget, and this particular one is about in-patients. That is what the Minister is referring to in terms of Indigenous navigators. We do have people in navigator positions at this point. There is a question about whether it would be a good idea to have more people in this position, and that is something that we are interested in exploring further.

That may or may not be connected to medical travel. What I mean by that is that, in a separate review of medical travel, which is in a...

Thank you. I understood the deputy minister to say that the RFP is out or about to go out and that the results would be ready by the end of the year, but perhaps he could be more specific. I would like to refer the question to him.

Yes. Thank you. The reason that the long-term care is offered in regional centres is that we need some efficiencies in the number of beds and the number of staff for the 24/7 responsibility, so it's turned out that, in the smaller communities, we just can't get to that economy of scale to provide for full supportive living, which would include nursing care as well as care aides. In terms of whether there has been any discussion to create a business or training component to situate in small communities, I am not aware of that, but I will ask the deputy minister if he is. Thank you.

Yes, that is correct. After-care takes place in the NWT, and this is an out-of-territory segment.

Thank you. As the Member said, we have hired a number of additional staff in Child and Family Services to improve services to families who need additional support. That is reflected in the budget here. With respect to Indigenous governments creating their own regime for taking care of Child and Family Services, we are very supportive of that. We are prepared to collaborate with Indigenous government organizations and the federal government to make that happen. It's federal legislation that enables this to happen, and the federal government has announced funding available to Indigenous...

Yes. I would like to refer that to the deputy minister. Thanks.