Sandy Lee

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...

I think I can safely state that just for our department there are lots of NGOs that we fund that are delivering many, many really substantive programming, like YWCA, Sally Ann, all of our...I don’t know. I don’t want to exclude anybody. They have the stability of funding. All those applications do not come up to my office where I need to review them. So I think we need to accept that there are different types and sizes and characters of NGOs and I want to assure the Member that I don’t micromanage in that way. This is why I just want to undertake to look at this situation and see what happened...

Yes, I will do that.

I acknowledge that we have had some incidents at the hospital in that specific unit. In general, every pass, the patients in the psychiatric unit are allowed to have temporary passes depending on their conditions and situations. It’s a rare situation where patients are held there without having any passes. There are medical assessments and lots of work done to make sure that one can and is allowed to have a temporary pass, whether it is to go out for a cigarette or sometimes they are allowed to go to visit families. The primary objective for that service is to eventually be able to integrate...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to recognize two doctors in the gallery. One is our very own CPHO, public health officer, Dr. Kami Kandola, and the other is Dr. Lorne Clearsky, who is visiting us for three days with the possibility of working up here. I’m not sure if he’s decided, but as the Minister of Health I’m just saying that this is a very exciting environment in which to practice medicine. It can be challenging but very rewarding, and when the Deh Cho Bridge is built, it’s going to beautiful, and we might even throw in free Internet. Mr. Speaker, if I...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Further to my returns to written questions earlier today I wish to table the following three documents entitled NWT Women Giving Birth - Number of Discharges In and Outside of the NWT 2005-2006 to 2009-2010; Program Enrolments and Graduates for All Nursing Programs Between 1998 and 2011; and Bachelor of Science in Nursing, Enrolments by Ethnicity and Year, 2006-2011.