Sandy Lee

There is no resistance or lack of willingness or any of those negative connotations, Mr. Speaker. The department has a number of legislations in their workload, and as the Member is well aware, we have a little bit of a traffic jam with legislative process. We, as a government, have a whole list of legislation, I would say upwards of at least 50 that have been in the works for many, many years. We are all in the same traffic highway on legislation.

We recognize the importance of regulating some of these professions and the ones that we have most urgent need is the licensed practical nurses...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The legislation that we are working on is going to be Health and Social Services umbrella profession legislation and it will start with including four large professions: licensed practical nurses, psychologists, emergency medical service providers and chiropractors, because they have been identified as the four we need to work on right away. There are several other professions that have asked to be included and they could be included as we go forward.

There is lots of research and background work that we need to do to establish this umbrella legislation and this has been...

Mr. Speaker, I would like to just reiterate that the department is reviewing the possibility of including this group of practitioners into omnibus allied health professional legislation. Each of them have very, very few numbers and this has been in the works and it will take some time to develop, but it is under review.

Secondly, it’s the Medical Profession Act in the Northwest Territories that defines who are doctors and who can call themselves doctors, so there is conflicting legislation that we need to work through.

The third thing is what is important is that for those people who are...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member is right; we are considering an omnibus legislation on various health or allied health professions and it is possible that this could be inputted in that. Thank you.

Thank you. I need to remind the Member also not to compare this profession as medical doctors, just because we have existing legislation that protects that word “doctor” just for those who are practicing medicine. So let me just say this profession is allowed to be practiced here. The practitioners are allowed to do their work and there’s nothing that we’re doing or not doing right now that prohibits them from doing their work. Like my colleague Minister Miltenberger just said to me, it’s like a float plane and we want the float plane to take off and if you load way too many things on there...

Ideally when a group gets funded they should be given enough notice to make adjustments between fiscal years and to be able to plan. I’m not sure if you need a multi-year arrangement to do that, because an argument could still be made that even if you had a multi-year, if there’s some kind of an operational and procedural delay, that’s the issue there in what the Member is saying. Without knowing details of the situation, I don’t know what happened to have the delay and also why some of those very specific adjustments that were requested were denied. I think we should leave room for some of...

Mr. Speaker, I know some things take longer than we would like, but the Member knows that we have been able to have pretty quick turnaround on things, understanding, though, in this situation, that I need to talk to a federal body. I need to have my officials talk to the federal body about the specific situation he is asking. I will undertake to look into it as soon as possible. I will get together with him as soon as possible as well. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, as I stated, I would be happy to get detailed information and get back to the Member, as well as finding out perhaps a process in place that people could inquire to. I will get back to the Member. Thank you.

Of course not. I could tell you that under NWT funded programs, under Healthy Food for Learning Education, Culture and Employment provides: $94,685 for Beaufort-Delta; $6,867 for Commission Scolaire; $50,488 for Deh Cho; $49,000 for Tlicho; $44,000 for Sahtu; $64,000 for South Slave; $23,989 for YCS; $45,000 for YK1. That’s just one column. I could provide the Member with the list. While we speak about the need to do things, I think we should be careful about just sweeping generalizations, saying that in a very kind of very mean way, I must say.

A large part of the work that we do in the Department of Health and Social Services is health promotion. Our staff is out there promoting healthy eating habits, dangers of child obesity, just eating healthy and not abusing things that are harmful to us. The pre-natal and post-natal health; there is so much work we do. In the past the government has reduced the power rates in the communities and that really helps with the cost of food in our smallest communities. As well, we have increased food mail programs. Not food mail, food basket. I think it’s important that we understand that there are...