Sandy Lee

Mr. Chairman, on family violence issues as with the situation with some other like topics, we work very closely with departments like Justice. Family Violence Coalition is comprised of NGOs that are involved in this work as well as the Department of Justice and Health and Social Services and other people who are working in that field. Mr. Chairman, I can assure the Member that a lot of the same people are involved in sharing information and working on strategies and evaluating the programs and such. Thank you.

The Member has been here for three and a half years. She knows how we get resources. It’s through the business plan process. All the departments and programs make business cases. There are unmet needs, yes, in Yellowknife, but there are unmet needs in every community. We have lots of people in our communities who could benefit from having supported living that are being taken care of by families and friends and communities. I have met them in every community in the Territory. So one of the ways we are doing that under Foundation for Change is including home care programming. Respite care is...

We’ll be floating this money into the authorities to work at the community level.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There’s no question that our Northern Nursing Program is a success story. We have produced a lot of excellent graduates and the last fiscal year we were able to place all 11 of them; nine of them in Yellowknife and two in Hay River. So, Mr. Speaker, I’m confident that we will be able to use the training that these nurses have received in various communities and health centres and hospitals around the Territories. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We are aware of the work that was done in the Yukon. The review we are doing is in a similar vein. The same group has done a review of similar programs in B.C. and Alberta. We are doing that and we will get recommendations and action items out of that and work with the committee on that in the spring. Thank you.

Yes, please. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We don’t have a dispute with the federal government on billing issues with medical travel. In fact, what Mr. Elkin referred to THAF, we received extra funding to deal with medical travel issues. As the Members know, we have an extension of two years and part of our obligation is to exit out of the program and determine how we are going to support this program from within. So that’s one of the reasons why we’re reviewing the medical travel, but as Mr. Elkin mentioned, we were able to extend THAF and now it’s called THSSI and we were able to secure some extra money for...

Thank you. On the first point, we are compiling documents to respond to the various commitments that we’ve made over yesterday and today and we will get it to the Members as soon as possible. I mean within hours and days here as the staff put it together.

I know that the Member has mentioned many a time about me coming to the standing committee with a document that showed that we were going to reduce the deficit at Stanton to zero. Honestly I cannot see how that kind of document could have been possible. I am aware that we had many, many discussions, because, as the Member has referred to a...

Mr. Speaker, this is an across-the-department approach and our director of policy is part of the steering committee. We provide our input, our expertise, our information into that group and obviously being involved in the...and the response and coming up with this response to the workshops and conferences and the interest that the Members in this House as well as the public have indicated to us as to the need to come up with this strategy. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As I indicated, we’ve completed our internal work. We would like to get them out to the public. I’m just wanting to let everybody know that the framework within which we’ve been working on is the recommendations from the Joint Working Group report. At this point, having heard what we have heard, we are not anticipating coming out with a whole new policy or making sweeping changes. What we are trying to do is do what we can within the existing policy framework and to try to accommodate some of the recommendations that were brought up by the Joint Working Group. I...