Michael Miltenberger

Thank you, Mr. Chair. On the consolidated clinic piece, we are working towards bringing forward that plan in time for the 2007-08 budget. The intent, of course, is as well everything falls to the new Legislature. They will make the decisions. As a system, we are going to have a plan in place, a strategic action plan, that is going to take us at least to 2010. These key pieces will be built in. My assumption is that they will make such good sense to the 16th Legislature that they will be carried on with and the work will continue. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the Member raises a very good point. Mammography services are available in Yellowknife. Women get referred here. As well, in the South Slave area, there have been arrangements made with Alberta with their mobile mammography equipment to come through the communities. That is, as well, still available. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We, at this point, between our own funding and available federal funding, invest in the neighbourhood of about $7 million for homecare. We see this as an area of continued investment that is identified across Canada as a service that has tremendous benefits that can keep people in their own homes and out of facilities that are very expensive to run. We are working to expand the support we can provide in the communities to work with the individuals, to help them stay in their own homes as long as possible to provide respite care services to adults. There is a whole...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the Member, for the most part, is correct. Historically, cancer rates in the Northwest Territories have been lower than the national average. They are, however, on the increase and moving towards the national average. I don’t have the specific statistics right before me, but if my memory serves me correctly, for example, the issue of colorectal cancer is not at, or slightly above the national average. For the most part, a lot of the cancers are still below the national average but moving up. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, this is an outstanding issue, as the Member has noted, and we have engaged the services of the HR department as it's newly structured. They’ve had one of their senior people who came over, in fact, from Health and Social Services, spearheading the work. I understand that we’re expecting a document to be available for our review by about the middle of next month. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the rewriting of the Mental Health Act is on our legislative to-do list, but I don’t anticipate that it will make it on to the doable legislative agenda. We are focussing right now before the House on the Tobacco Act, but the two major pieces that we now have to get done in this Assembly are the rewrite of the Public Health Act as well as the Pharmacy Act. We have dozens of other pieces of legislation that have to be updated, one of which is the Mental Health Act. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, there is no double standard that I’m aware of, that there is one standard for assessments and that social workers and child welfare workers are to follow. Thank you.

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...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, I would just like to clarify a number of issues. There was the equivalent of 14 positions a number of years ago put into Stanton that were to be held as supernumeracy positions, as the deputy minister characterized them yesterday, so that new graduating students and those on preceptorships and requiring mentoring would have those positions without taking away from on-the-floor nurses. So very clearly, we have tried to allow for that fact. I just want to repeat, we are not just better training the staff we have, these are all new positions that we are...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, we’ll, of course, look at any proposal that’s brought forward, but I would indicate here that I will engage in the initial discussion of the clear way to deal with this initially is to try to provide the comfort and support necessary to get the alternative services there for birthing so they can have the majority of their babies born in the community. We will look at what is being proposed by Hay River Health and Social Services Authority, but I will continue to make my best case to the board and community that birthing services involving midwifery is a...