Michael Miltenberger

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.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the fundamental issue, of course, is children in need of service and often protection. It’s done in a number of ways. The laws were changed a number of years ago so that it didn’t always require the children be taken into care, but there is foster care arrangements, there’s support and services to parents and families while a child is in care, there’s just general services to children, youth and their families if their child requires service but remains in the family home, there’s adoption subsidies to support special needs of a child who was in...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the rationale for that decision was based on efficiencies; it was based on the need for coordination; it was based on the fact that we found out at one point, a year or so ago, that we had paid for over 1,800 bed days in Capital Health out in Edmonton for services that could have been provided out of Stanton, because without the coordination that we currently have in place, Stanton was routinely overflown as a result of referrals made by the different authorities and the different communities. This was part of our review of how we do business. We were...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, the coming into force date is September 2006. Once this bill receives third reading and is given assent, we will be working with the Health and Social Services authorities to make sure that we inform all of the communities and all the involved people. There have been meetings with environmental health officers. There are going to be more in terms of how they are going to do the work. We are going to be communicating with all of the businesses. We are going to be working in conjunction with and trying to be as cooperative with the WCB as possible with...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The third-party accountability framework is designed to be able to recognize the work of NGOs. The health authorities, the DEAs are considered employees. They have collective agreements. They are part of our budgeting process. NGOs currently, in terms of when it comes to forced growth and other issues, are not. This third-party accountability was designed specifically due to the recognition of the fact by the government that this is an area that we would have to be able to better define so that we can address appropriately. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The intent is to do the groundwork and give everyone lead time to know this is coming and we’re looking at a coming into force date of September 2006, which is a few months. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, this issue is one where there has not been consistency in the past. My account for not being aware of this information is due to, in all probability, my memory and not being aware of that particular detail. I do know that there is no annual increase to NGOs that are built in as forced growth. I know that the concern from women’s shelters, from every other organization that I have talked to, has been that often their budgets have been pegged at a certain level as they haven’t seen any increases for salaries, cost of doing business or anything. In this...

Yes, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we will be sharing with the Members the document done by Dr. Chalmers which was a review of the work that has been taking place over the last number of years, based on her initial assessment of the addictions and mental health services in the North back in 2001, which was called, A State of Emergency. From that document, we came up with an action plan that committed us to a course of action across the North that saw us do a much better job in terms of bringing addictions workers on stream, setting up mental health workers, supervisors, all based on the...