Michael Miltenberger

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to thank the Members for supporting this bill, but I would just like to take this moment to acknowledge and recognize that this will be deputy minister Dave Murray’s last appearance before this House, that he will be moving on out of government into the rest of his life. I would just like to thank him for all the work he’s done on our behalf. It’s been a pleasure having him at the table.

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Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It came from me. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the Member’s good advice and we’ve made note of that and we will be rolling out a communication plan and we will be ensuring that every community is made fully aware of this very new and important piece of legislation. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I have indicated previously in this session and in this House, the government has developed a third-party accountability framework that is giving us a way to put a frame around this particular issue, recognizing the important work that the NGOs are doing and classifying them in different categories. The key number one category being that if the NGO does not provide the service, would the government have to provide it on their own with their own resources? As I indicated previously in this House, we are working on lists collectively that we can bring forward that...

Mr. Chairman, I have with me Patricia Gall, our legal support from Justice; Dr. Corriveau, chief medical officer with the Department of Health and Social Services; and, Mr. Dave Murray, deputy minister of Health and Social Services, for his last piece of legislation. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am pleased to introduce Bill 16, Tobacco Control Act. This government is proud to bring forth legislation that builds upon and expands municipal bylaws and the existing Workers' Compensation Board regulations. I would like to recognize the hard work and thoughtful consideration of this bill by the Standing Committee on Social Programs. The committee's personal contributions in passing on the public's input has resulted in a bill that will help us greatly reduce the public's expose to second-hand smoke.

With this bill, we continue the process of denormalizing...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the criteria was fairly broad by Health Canada. It was to build, to promote and improve primary health care services, and there were proposals put forward by the different authorities to do different things. In Yellowknife the one project was to do this integrated service. In Fort Smith it was to help move midwifery along. The other ones, we're going to get the information. The decisions were made by us and we submitted our list as a government, as a system, to the federal government to get the funding to flow, which then took a number of years, as...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, this primary health care transition fund, that Health Canada funded, was intended to improve access, accountability and integration of services as relates to the whole concept of primary care, and it allowed us in the Northwest Territories to advance 11 different projects, and we're going to get you that information. But the intent here was to look at program improvements.

When this was initially agreed to back in 2000, it was before we had nurse practitioners; it was before we had midwives; but it was when the concepts of integrated service delivery...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I don’t have the detail on the other projects. I know that there were 11 and they were across the regions across the North, but I could get that information for committee.

Yes, Madam Chair.