Sandy Lee

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. To my right is Ms. Lisa Cardinal, director of policy, planning and evaluation of Health and Social Services. To my left is Mr. Mark Aitken, director of legislation division. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to introduce Bill 4, An Act to Amend the Child and Family Services Act. The proposed amendments to the act are technical housekeeping changes required to clarify provisions already established in the act. The amendments include:

ensuring the current confidentiality provisions apply to all persons who have access to child protection files, including casuals, clerical, and those who are not directly involved in child care matters, such as information technology services and custodial staff;

renaming the various ‘plan of care’ terminology, thereby...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I’d like to move a motion.

I move that Bill 4, An Act to Amend the Child and Family Services Act, be amended by adding the following after clause 16:

17(1)

Subject to subsection (2), this Act comes into force on assent.

(2)

Section 16 comes into force on a day to be fixed by order of the Commissioner.

Mr. Chairman, I have a motion I need to make on the bill that we’ve agreed to.

Yes, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. For the children, the numbers have stayed quite stable since 2004-05. The average number of children in care back then was 39, the next year it was 39, and the year after, 36. We are projecting for 2009-10, 35. So those numbers have stayed the same. The number of adult placements has increased over the last number of years, but it was 27 in 2004-05, then 29 the year after, 35 in 2006-07, the year after, and then 48 in 2007-08, 51 in 2008-09, and 46 is projected.

Mr. Chairman, the people that are placed in these facilities are usually from either severe disability and...

Yes, the public has the opportunity in their town hall meetings to challenge the observations, facts, data, and they could suggest their own solutions about what we should do with the information we have. I think it’s really important for people to have a productive, and to be engaged in, conversation. They need to have lots of information. So we are looking forward to getting the feedback from the people about the information that we have there, what suggestions they may have and what additions they could add. That’s exactly what the public working group has done so far, and we look forward...

Colville Lake is one of the communities, along with some others that do not have a resident nurse. They have a half-time homecare support worker and a community health rep. They are very closely supported by the nursing centre in Fort Good Hope. They do visits to Colville Lake regularly and I am aware that they are in constant touch by phone and the community health reps in Colville Lake are trained to provide services. That is the case for all of the other facilities in the Territories. Not only for community health reps, but even for other health care professionals like nurses, because...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I believe the changes were made in consultation with a public working group. They had a meeting and they were quite pleased, actually, with the information that they received. They had some suggestions for change and that was incorporated and it was reinstated. I don’t have the document right in front of me so I don’t know exactly what assumptions and what page she’s referring to, but if she could specify that I’d be happy to answer them. Thank you.

Absolutely, and right now at this moment we welcome any nurse: the young nurse, the young graduates, the retired, the part-time. Anybody who wants to work three shifts, we would take any nurse. Mr. Speaker, qualified nurses... We have about 400 nurses registered, I believe, under the Nurses’ Association, but we continue to have 30 to 40 percent vacancy rates of nurses and other health care professionals. Communities like Tsiigehtchic and Wrigley have the equivalent of one PY and that’s equivalent to 2003 and that is a part-time position. So the community of Tsiigehtchic gets half a year...