Tom Beaulieu

Yes, Mr. Chairman. To my right I have the deputy minister, Debbie DeLancey, Health and Social Services. To my left I have the assistant deputy minister, Mr. Derek Elkin, Health and Social Services.

Mr. Chair, in the department we have one position, but most of the money to do early childhood development work is with the authorities, with the health and social services authorities across the North. I don’t have the detail of how many positions that constitutes.

Mr. Chair, as we travel to the communities, many of the Aboriginal communities that we had gone to have indicated to myself and the staff that was travelling with me when they wanted to take a look at treatment. As an example, that we should be working with the communities to develop a model which meant that if there were families that needed treatment, if there was youth that needed treatment, that they would be going out on the land with the elders and that they would be essentially living out there on the land for a period of time while they address their addiction issues. We had indicated...

In general, the governance, if we move to all regional advisory boards, there will be a greater focus on the involvement of communities, and that is the intention on the Beaufort-Delta board at this time. For the Stanton, what we would like to do – and it’s something that we’re going to take back to Standing Committee on Social Programs – is to have the seven regional chairs or public administrators, in other words the Joint Leadership Council, oversee the operations at Stanton, in effect having a territorial type of board that would be responsible for the Stanton Territorial Hospital.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This year, in this budget, our plan is to spend $4 million to complete the remaining schematic planning and the initial occupational planning. We can’t go beyond that. We have to have approval of this House to go beyond that. We’re moving forward in this area and this is part of the process, but I can’t anticipate what there’s going to be in the capital plan in future years.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We can provide that information.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. That concludes Health and Social Services’ response to general comments.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In the growing seniors population, it’s a demographic that is happening right across the country. We recognize that. That is a fast growing population. In order for us to maintain the funding to support the fast growing population, we do need to put in programs, rehab programs, more funding towards long-term care and putting some good, solid assisted living programs in place to keep people in their homes and so on.

The deficits of the health and social services authorities across the region had indicated earlier that our intention is to look at that by trying to do some...

Yes, I will commit to that.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There were a lot of comments here. I’m going to try to run through them without trying to repeat as much as possible. Also to try to group some of the response as best I can.

On the eHealth, we too agree that the electronic health is the way to go. Right now we have digital imaging and the DI/PACS are available in 22 communities across the North. This includes both the Stanton Hospital in Yellowknife, Inuvik Regional Hospital and then the following 20 communities: Hay River, Fort Smith, Behchoko, Simpson, Deline, Norman Wells, Tulita, Good Hope, Fort Resolution, Fort...