Tom Beaulieu

My understanding is there is no cap in as far as time, but the flow of the funding within that agreement is contingent upon approvals in the Assembly.

Yes, we will continue to employ common sense. The medical travel, we must remember that many individuals who have their opinion on medical travel is based on what they have gone through themselves. There are many, many, many scenarios with medical travel. We have to look at all of them. We also have to take into account the delivery of the program, the politics of it, the regulations. All of those aspects are things that we’re looking at to try and make it more efficient, and to develop a policy that does have common sense and is responsible through the government.

Just off the top of my head, a lot of the prevention work will reduce medical travel. Electronic medical records will reduce medical travel. E-health also will reduce medical travel. The TSN, I think we have a different name for that now, Territorial Support Network, where there’s a doctor on call who is able to assist people in remote communities through the telehealth system. Those items are intended to reduce the cost of medical travel. Otherwise we’re back to, without THSSI funding, the increase in the Canada Health Transfer will probably end up filling the gaps in 2014-2015.

Along those lines, we have recently hired an official languages manager. That was with the intention of updating our services on the official languages. We are also running a medical terminology specific to cancer, in Fort Good Hope as a pilot. Once the workshop is able to come back to us with terminology that we should be using to describe some of the things related to cancer, we will see the success of that type of workshop and then expand on that.

As a Minister of Health, I’m trying to develop things today that will have a savings in the future. I recognize that the Minister of Finance has done the tour on the ways that they can put the savings into the budget and, as the Member indicates, a lot of them are related to Health as a department, and consulting with my senior managers and finding out how do we think that we can meet some of the objectives of the people in the Territories and that’s what we’re doing. We’re putting together things that we think are huge cost drivers in the system and we’re trying to curb that now so that they...

Thank you. We’re expecting the health centre to be open early in the new fiscal year, early.

That is something I would take back to my department. I know there are no shelters or any type of homes targeted specifically for persons with disabilities. There is not, where such a category exists. There are categories of housing designed to accommodate persons with disabilities, but there are no programs targeted only for persons with disabilities.

Although I was not involved in the original decision to bring the shelters to the larger centres, I can assume that the shelters were based on people who were considered to be absolute homeless versus relatively homeless. What happens is, essentially people who are absolutely homeless are people who have absolutely no place to call their own and the relatively homeless people actually don’t have a place to call home but do have a place to live, such as people who sleep on couches, as the Member indicated. Why we don’t have shelters in all of the communities is largely due to the cost.

Mahsi cho, Mr. Speaker. [English translation not provided.]

I want to congratulate Mr. Dan Summers, principal of Deninu K’ue School in Fort Resolution, for being recognized as one of Canada’s outstanding principals for 2013. The Learning Partnership announced Mr. Summers as one of 51 exceptional educators to receive the Award for Excellence in Public Education.

Through his leadership at the Deninu School, since 2009 learning outcomes have significantly increased. In 2012, 87 percent of Deninu School students achieved a national average or better on a group reading achievement and diagnosis...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We have not put additional positions into the health and social services authority in the Sahtu. We have essentially looked at the Sahtu in the greater picture, in the territorial picture, as we’re trying to address what we think the issues are going be. That is that there will potentially be an increase in alcohol-related issues.

We do have regular updates from the CEO from the Sahtu Health and Social Services Authority. There’s a requirement for us to respond specifically with personnel on the ground, and then we will have that discussion with the Sahtu Health and...