Sandy Lee

The input will come from the feedback that we would receive in the town hall meetings. As well, we will be posting questionnaires on the website and we would advertise that so people will be able to go in there. There are some checkbox kind of questions, but there are also spaces where people can write their opinions on the questions they ask. So it will be designed in a way that will allow people to give their feedback on the information they see and what other suggestions they might have. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The meeting being planned is a town hall meeting so that any interested parties can attend. The location and time will be advertised well in advance. I believe it’s on the website and, if not already, will be advertised in the paper and other medium, so that as many people can come and they can have the information in front of us and give us their feedback based on the facts that we have on things like whether there should be some sharing of costs.

We should remember, everybody should know that we’re not talking about the range of benefits that are available. Those are...

I tabled in the House about three weeks ago satisfaction surveys from residents all over the Territories about the services they’re receiving in health centres and hospitals. Over 80 percent of people say they are satisfied with the services they have. It is wrong... I understand the Member would like to have a resident nurse in Tsiigehtchic. A lot of our services, even in bigger communities, are by referral services. We’re not able to have resident doctors, resident nurses, resident radiologists, resident everything in every community. We do spend $326 million for 40,000 people scattered in...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. With respect, the information that the Member just read should be read together with other information that we have provided. The information on nurses-in-charge, we know that we’ve had at least 36 weeks of nursing coverage in Tsiigehtchic for a community of 170 people. The Member knows that I am committed to enhancing nursing services in Tsiigehtchic and all the small communities. That is the work we are doing with Foundation for Change. It is wrong when we tell the community members that they don’t have nursing services. We have nursing services in Tsiigehtchic. I...

Mr. Speaker, with all due respect, the Member is absolutely wrong in saying the department is coming up with the plan. I think we’ve learned the last time that coming up with a plan and asking the public to approve the plan did not work. We have learned that. The department staff has been working really hard to gather the data on who the users are, and what their backgrounds are, and what the cost of the services are. We are just providing the raw data. We provided that to the media. We provided that to the committee. We provided that to the public working group and anybody who wants to see...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the Member is right; we did make a commitment to have a full consultation process as we went back to work to improve on the information that we had and the discussions that we need to have with the public. We have had that discussion with the public working group as a stakeholder representative. The departmental officials met with them and my information is at the last meeting they had, they wanted the department to come back with more detailed information and this is what they received last Friday. Since then, they have given us feedback that we are...

If we were to, well, I mean, I know that the deputy minister is planning on meeting with the foundation as a member of the board or invited member of the board. With respect to cancer screening, that’s a service issue and it involves... The wait list is not necessarily because of the spacing issue but is because of the lack of specialists. Part of the work we are doing is we’re looking to see if we can offer that service not only in Yellowknife at Stanton but also in Hay River and possibly Inuvik. That’s part of the Territory-wide service plan that we’re working on. We would certainly be happy...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank the Member for the question. The urgency to make this capital investment at this time is because we need this money to replace the laboratory information system. We are responding to the vendor, General Electric, who has given us notice that they would discontinue supporting this system and gave us two short extensions until November of this year, I believe, or support as of December 2, 2009. So we need to make sure that we have a system in place that’s reliable, because this is essential to our lab service. It deals with reading and connecting all the lab...

I’m not sure if I understand the question. I’d like to give our public a lot more credit than what the Member is suggesting. I think if you see the material on the website, it’s quite plainly written. There will be a facilitator at the meeting that will present the facts. We’re not going to tell people to interpret. We will present the facts and then engage in a dialogue, very much like what we did with the standing committee and very much like what we did, I believe, with the public working group. You lay out the facts and then ask the people for their input. The facts are important, because...

I think we should be mindful of the fact that we serve about 40,000 people in the Territories and by and large the service delivery goes smoothly. I do appreciate that I get a number of files across my desk and the MLAs get them as well. But if you compare that, a few dozen a year to 40,000-plus people that we serve, and the satisfaction reports that we’ve been getting, I think the service is satisfactory that way.

Now, people are always not going to like being told that they can’t take medical travel for this and that, and it might not have anything to do with the fact of whether it’s right or...