Sandy Lee

Mr. Speaker, this is a service being provided by the federal government under NIHB. We assist in the process in terms of providing space and helping them with the administrative procedure. I agree that this is an important service. I will get a complete update on when the service will start, how many people are on the waiting list and what options they are looking at to speed up the process, including what the Member has suggested. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, yes, I would ask them to publicly advertise and update the public as to where that program is. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member is absolutely right. He’s talking about the situation that we deal with every day. We have unlimited demand for services in our communities. There are lots of program needs across the NWT, especially in small communities. This is the reason why the government has used the Strategic Initiatives committee Building Our Future funding to introduce and expand respite care programs in communities outside of Yellowknife for three years.

What I said this morning is that the government wants to keep moving forward with that and include Yellowknife programs into that...

Mr. Speaker, there is no set time, but I will make the commitment to review the situation and get back to the Member as soon as possible. Thank you.

The Member knows that we will be debating the 2011-2012 budget. We just had a preview of that and there is a respite care program in there that we approved. The respite care program under THSSI is handled differently because it’s federal funding and we did it through a supplementary appropriation. I look forward to the support of the Members on the other side when we work to develop a program on respite care. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, I am not familiar with the detail of how that works out. I will undertake to get more detail on that. I would need to consult with the Department of Justice. Thank you.

Thank you. The Member is once again mixing up the message, misinterpreting. Mr. Speaker, we’ve had detailed discussions, and the Members and standing committee know this. THSSI funding is a major initiative by the federal government. We’ve spent medical travel out of that, we pay for our doctors, we pay for specialists, we pay for midwives, we pay for dialysis, we pay for diagnostic imaging. Mr. Speaker, should I repeat that 10 more times? The Member will not hear this. We pay a lot of money on that. It’s wrong when he says that we don’t know how we are spending this money, you’re spending on...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The fact is we are getting distracted by how this information was communicated. I would rather focus on moving forward.

Mr. Speaker, the federal government gave us $50 million and we have to plan on budgeting accordingly. Both THAF and THSSI -- and Member Bisaro asked what are we going to do with that money -- it’s important for everybody to know that that money is spent as part of our health care budget. We pay nurses, nurse practitioners, midwives, doctors, diagnostics, we pay for health care out of that THAF funding. There is a two-year time limit. We need to find...

Mr. Speaker, the Member sits on the Standing Committee on Social Programs. The way we fund money and extra resources is to work through that. I intend to come to the committee with the details of that. The focus is to help the families who need respite care not only in Yellowknife but across the communities. We need to look at this program comprehensively. I am willing to do that. I am committed to do that. We have, in fact, increased the money on respite care within the department budget. We do need to address the program with YACL, and I am committed to coming back to the committee with the...

The Member is right that we just approved $250,000 under a supp appropriation for ’10-11, because that’s how we do our budgeting. We approve one year at a time. The budget for ‘11-12 has not been before this House. Now, because we have gotten money, on a time-limited basis for THSSI and we found, like I said before, we pay for doctors, nurse practitioners and everything else, all of the authorities are working together to see how we transition and we exit out of some of this funding. So that’s under discussion and that hasn’t been before this House, Mr. Speaker. The authorities are working...