Sandy Lee

Mr. Speaker, I am open to continuing to have meetings. We are working with the staff that are affected with HR. We are working on recruiting and training the new staff so that we could have a transition. We will have a continued dialogue with the community. We want to continue to work with the elders and leadership of the community because we want this to work, and the only way it is going to work is to have support from the communities. Also, we continue to work with the two residents that are in the centre. We talked to the families and listened to their input about what they would like to...

Mr. Speaker, we see that by changing the use of the Joe Greenland Centre we will be able to increase the assisted living space there in partnership with the Housing Corporation. We are going to be going from eight to 15 beds in that facility. We are aware that there are elders and persons with disabilities who are on a wait list to move into the Joe Greenland Centre. From the Department of Health and Social Services’ perspective, our expanded coverage of home care will be able to provide better service at the Joe Greenland Centre for the existing residents as well as the new residents that...

Mr. Speaker, I don’t know exactly what he is asking. Mr. Speaker, with respect to the naturopath issue, I received correspondence last fall. I asked the staff to meet with the person so that we could explain what the situation is with naturopath practice. Also, there was a concern that there might be a misuse of the word “doctor,” given that our Medical Profession Act states that it prohibits use of that word where there might be some misunderstanding that some people may be practicing medicine. I am just saying this because that is what the Medical Profession Act says.

There were meetings held...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I had an inquiry about this issue. I have asked my staff to meet with people in question. The meeting was held. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, absolutely. We are committed to working with elders and community leaders and the MLA to make sure that we work together and work well in this transition.

I am very happy to hear about the community meeting that they had where the elders were able to come out and have a discussion. They asked for access to more home care support workers. They would like to see Meals on Wheels. They talked about the possibility of either going to the Joe Greenland Centre to eat or have food brought to them. They were very interested in having recreational programs and other programs to bring the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am pleased to update the House that the transition in the elders program for Aklavik is going well. We have hired an extra home support worker who will begin on April 1st. We are in the process of going through the competition process for the third home care worker. This will triple the coverage of home care workers for elders in Aklavik. We plan on extending hours of home care support to include weekends and evenings. We will continue to deliver an elders day program out of Joe Greenland Centre.

Mr. Speaker, I can also advise you that there was a public meeting held...

We contract medevac services to our providers. We have people qualified to handle that. Medic North does that on the ground. We have staff and people equipped to handle medical situations on the plane. We spend millions and millions to do this medical travel. Mr. Speaker, I want to assure the Member and the public that we take care of our residents.

I want to offer to the Member again, before he makes generalized statements that sort of impunes the staff and the contracts that work for us, maybe he should just present to me the details and I will get back to him. Thank you.

I thank the Member for asking for an update because he is working with very outdated information. As the mayor from Edmonton, when he was visiting here, had told us in the briefing meeting we had with all the Members, the Premier of Alberta, which I have advised the Member many times, has set up a Health Quality Council of Alberta with a mandate to come up with a plan on how we deal with emergency medevac programs at the airport. The city of Edmonton, citizens of Edmonton have voted resoundingly to approve the plan to close that municipal airport. Members should know, and I tell them again...

As I stated, we are looking at it, we’re reviewing it and looking at the possibility of including it.

The writing of legislation to regulate a profession is a lot more complex than we think. Regulating a profession for engineers and architects took 10 years. Regulating a profession for nurse practitioners and midwives took many, many, many years. You would have to ask a lawyer and other professionals to see why that is so complex, but it is not just something that you do lightly. It’s not as expeditious and easy as we would like.

As I said to Members yesterday, we are working on an umbrella legislation that would be called Health and Social Services Profession Legislation. The groups that we...