Tom Beaulieu

Thank you, Madam Chair. The Member is talking about the need to reform the governance. Without reforming our governance and operating great parts of health and social services as one system could go a long way to resolving the solution. We have looked at our audit and in the Auditor General’s report they talk about a lot of the cost pressures and how the various authorities do the same programs, the same programs that we deliver to those in a different way. There is savings to be had in the area of putting one system together under procurement. Also in the various aspects of finance where a...

Yes, I can provide that information to the Member and the House.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The positions of nurse practitioners are needed in the regional centres where they’re able to perform their full nurse practitioner jobs. Nurse practitioners are brought in and educated to become nurse practitioners so that they can be out in the field and providing much needed relief like physician-type of work. The nurse practitioners, when they end up wishing to remain in Yellowknife, do end up as registered nurses on many occasions because they have doctors in Yellowknife. I think seven of our nine nurse practitioners are located here in Yellowknife.

The department will actually be working on a business case for reallocation in that funding, and also the expansion of other health professionals, and particularly the nurse practitioner duties, in order to try to accommodate the lack of doctors in the various communities. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. On August 15th of last year the operating room where there was an issue was resumed to capacity. However, the aging equipment continues to present challenges to maintain consistent pH levels and the optimum sterilization results. So we’re not anticipating that there will be further issues, but given the age of the hospital and the operating room itself, it is possible. At this time, like I said, we’re operating at full capacity and it should be okay. I can’t make a prediction on that, Madam Chair.

Mr. Speaker, an example of the departments working with other departments is like going into the schools and providing money to the schools and having something like Drop the Pop promotion in schools that we’re going to go into with. Like I indicated, they’ll be launching that in 40 schools this week and next week. Yes, our intention is to work on the prevention with the Department of MACA because of the youth and also in the schools, education. Yes, I think we’re also working on some other areas with the Department of Justice that may not be exactly with health promotion for children, but we...

The government has given Health and Social Services $470,000 to work on the creation of the Child and Family Services Committee. We think that will go a long ways to the prevention. The Member is right; we haven’t struck any of those committees at this point. We are, as this is all part of our tours to do consultation in communities. When we went into the Sahtu we looked at and we had an initial meeting with the health and social services authority, and at that time the health and social services authority felt like it was adding another layer of government to the system and thought it was...

The Department of Health and Social Services goes through the annual business planning process, like any other department, but we actually did discuss the ways where we can do this, where we can provide multi-year funding to organizations that are making progress in the area of prevention and promotion. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I have that information in the briefing note; I don’t have that information here. As I recall, there are two operating rooms that were under the sterilization issue and that one is functioning fully. I think the other one, there are still some issues, but it is able to function to a certain level. I think that they’re able to do about 60 percent of the operations in that operating room, but there are some certain operations that they still can’t do in that one operating room. That’s my understanding at this time, but I can quickly check to see if those numbers are...

At this time we recognize the fact that there is obesity, high obesity amongst children. The department is trying to work with the federal government on the childhood obesity issue right across the board by asking the health centres and anybody that is in the health field to work on proper eating, and not eating sugar, and exercising and so on. Essentially what we’re trying to do is approach this from a wellness and promotion area, hoping that these issues are picked up at this time. Some of them are difficult to pick up, but that is what we are hoping to do with the promotion and prevention...