Tom Beaulieu

Thank you. Yes, I’m prepared to call the Health Minister in Ottawa or if she’s in her Iqaluit office, to have this discussion with her. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We have tracked the situation. We recognize that it’s a federal government issue. We know the Minister and we have provided some information to the MLAs office, but we’re also prepared to make contact with that federal Minister to find out the details of why those cheques were late. Thank you.

We are currently with the MLAs from Beaufort-Delta to try to put a Beaufort-Delta health advisory council together that will work with the public administrator or with the chair, one of the systems. We haven’t made our final decision yet, until we review the terms of reference the JLC this week. We’re hoping to then provide the terms of reference to the Beaufort-Delta MLAs within that forum. Without pre-empting the decisions that those individuals on that council would make, I’d like to say that this is one of the things that we will look at very closely, where we’ve heard Members that there...

Recognizing the deviation from the NIHB formulary could potentially cost more money than expected and have other impacts, but I will commit to continue to look at off-label drugs and the positive impacts of off-label drugs on a one-off basis.

Thank you. At this point any drugs that are considered to be off-label drugs that have benefits other than what’s indicated and approved by Health Canada, is on a one-off basis, like I indicated. It’s requested by the physician so that an individual that is prescribed drugs and is having a positive effect in another area, the exception can be requested by a physician. The physician’s request will then go to Alberta Blue Cross for review and then it will come back to Health and Social Services for consideration.

I know that the community counselling services are available to everyone in the communities, so also available to everyone in Yellowknife. These members that are going there, we could maybe provide some information to them, advising them that counselling for addictions is available near where the day shelter is, and that perhaps that would be a method of informing them, and also getting them to go take counselling within the city. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I can’t come up with all of the services that would be offered in the shelter, off the top of my head, but I can say that the day shelter is a project that has a committee overseeing any of the projects and so on. The committee has members from the YK Health and Social Services, BHP Billiton, City of Yellowknife and our department. We can work on putting something together and provide to the Member that we can lay out what services could be offered to the individuals that frequent that shelter. Thank you.

As is across the country, the NWT recognizes that the seniors population will be growing quickly, and it’s been an issue, I think, for at least 25 years when they started to do the projections and recognizing that. For the Department of Health and Social Services, we have some senior citizens consultants to consult about what type of rehabilitation services are going to be needed, the extent of what type of services will be needed within the department. Aside from that we are funding the NWT Seniors’ Society. We give them now close to $200,000 a year for them to work with the Seniors’ Society...

As I indicated, the DM has asked to sit on the Transition Advisory Committee. What I can do is go back to the deputy minister to see if we have worked out some sort of plan with the City of Edmonton or Alberta Health and Wellness, to see if there is a plan that will support our medevacs, to see if there is an alternative closer to the uptown, such as Garrison or that some emergency may be kept open. I can have that information for the Member before the end of session.

The capital planning process is going to determine where the next capital projects will occur. It will be very difficult for me to indicate that that would be the next capital planning project that we would build. As far as long-term care and as far as health facilities go, we can seriously look at a long-term care facility over there, but how it competes against other capital projects is determined by the capital planning or infrastructure committees set up within the infrastructure we have here as a government. Thank you.