Tom Beaulieu

I don’t want to be throwing out dates guessing at these things. All I can say is that bariatric surgery is on the agenda for the team of individuals or the committee that has the NWT Medical Association and the department on it looking at the system now. I’m hoping that it doesn’t take years to come out with something. However long it does take, it would be once we’ve decided that this would be an insured service in the system, then we come back through the regular business planning process. However long it takes for us to add this and get this approved through the business planning process...

There is no limit in the time that we can provide funding to an organization, and then we look at any new organization in this area on a case-by-case basis.

No, I don’t know the stats for the number of babies born with jaundice, but we would be easily able to get that information from the places where the babies are born.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, I will commit to re-examining the possibility of having nursing services in Wrigley. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. The existing medevac contract has been extended for us to do a thorough and proper review. The RFP will hopefully be out in April and we’re expecting to have a new contract in place by September 30, 2014.

We’re not anticipating that change. We were going to change the standards. Maybe we could have further clarification. We weren’t thinking of changing the act or regulations but putting in territorial standards and other standards around education and so on. Perhaps I could get the deputy minister to provide some detail on what we consider or think the cost would be around that change.

I can’t see it being too difficult. We can provide a briefing note to the Member.

At this point we are thinking of approaching the midwives that are in Fort Smith to talk to us about how the program functions in Fort Smith. Right now the midwives have been doing deliveries in Fort Smith for the last several years, I think since 2005 when those regulations were developed for the community of Fort Smith. Now that they have doctors in Fort Smith, how that will change and how the system will work with doctors and how the system would work without doctors. The role of the midwives would be to give us the on-the-ground information on what works and what does not work. We’re...

Madam Chair, we can provide a general response. I will have the deputy minister do that.

Thank you, Madam Chair. We have not received a request from the Beaufort-Delta Health and Social Services Authority to provide this material. What we would be prepared to do is we could check with the authority, and then we will get a determination from them if they’re going to make a request for that. Then we will take it from there.