Sandy Lee

I have worked with parents of children with autism, and I am aware of situations in Yellowknife where certain children with autism have someone with them the entire day at school because that child needs a full-time aide every minute he is in school.

What I’m saying is it’s hard to talk about how many hours we provide a child with autism. My answer is: it depends. It depends on the needs of the child as well as what services are available. Children with autism sometimes need…. I don’t know; I’m not a professional. I think that’s all I can say for now.

Mr. Speaker, I’m not aware of parents being able to receive funding from Yellowknife Health and Social Services Authority or any authority.

What I’m telling the Member is that parents can receive the services. We still have more speech therapists — or any other specialists — that the children with autism or any other disability need. They’re mostly hired by the health authorities. There is a team of people who would work with children and families to provide the services they need.

You have to understand that children with autism come with all sorts of individual and varying degrees of needs...

I think we are talking about two different things. I do acknowledge and want to say that we could do a better job at supporting and helping the new grads coming out of college. That’s one of the reasons why not all nurse grads can be placed in a setting: they do need support, and we need to make sure that experienced nurses and staff are able to be there to help them.

On the use of locum nurses, any nurse you talk to will tell you no nurse is the same as the nurse right next to her. Nurses come with different backgrounds and different qualifications, and we have to make sure that we have the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There is a clear understanding within our health and social services system to follow the affirmative action plan and to train and hire as many northern employees and graduates as possible.

First of all, we have reduced the use of locum nurses substantially. We have a larger pool of casual nurses registered with the nursing association who are available to work in the Territories. This is less costly than bringing in locums. I could provide the Member with the stats on that.

In the situation that the Member is talking about, particular to his constituent, I understand that she wanted to work in the psychiatric unit. That’s a very, very small unit, and it could be that the hospital was not able to accommodate that situation. I’d be happy to undertake seeing what other options were...

Absolutely, Mr. Speaker. Our health authorities are encouraged to hire Northerners.

In the situation to which the Member is referring, we had one of the biggest graduating nursing classes this year from Aurora College. Out of 15 grads, I think almost all of them were offered a northern placement. Ten of them have accepted their placements in the Territories, and seven were placed at Stanton Territorial Health Authority.

I understand that not everybody who wanted to work at Stanton was offered a job at Stanton. The constituent that the Member is referring to was placed in Hay River, and...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I thank the Member for the question. I’m thinking that, in the interest of mutual respect and decency that we’re supposed to treat each other with in this House, perhaps someday the honourable Member for Yellowknife Centre will make a statement about all the requests that my office does respond to and the constituents that we help him with. I know we have done some good, because I have had his constituents personally thanking me.

On that note, I’ll take the Member’s question on notice.

Mr. Speaker, I just reviewed and approved a document that’s been produced by the Department of Health that gives a very good indication as to why the residents of the Territories visit health centres and access Health and Social Services care. I expect to have that published and tabled in the House. I think that would give us a good starting point to have further discussion on that. I agree with the Member that we need to continue to work on this challenge. I look forward to doing more work with the Member. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, the Member is well aware that we do have different categories of services that are available in communities, but every community in the Territories has access to programs as they need them. I think the community of Fort McPherson, for example, is quite fortunate in having a stable nurseincharge and long-term staff who work there. The same is the case for Aklavik. For the community of Tsiigehtchic, while they may not have a number of health care professionals and social service professionals residing in the community, they do have access to care in the Inuvik facility by medical...

Communities of different sizes have different PYs allocated, whether it’s for nursing or any other services. We do have a constant challenge of vacancy rates and being able to recruit and retain, so we do work constantly on making sure that every community, no matter the size, has the level of service that people require.