Tom Beaulieu

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...

There is a need to do some consultation. Right now, as a department and as senior management to the department, we feel that this is the way to go. We need to reform governance in order to better take control of the costs. However, there is a requirement for a consultation.

I don’t think anybody that is working in the regions with the authorities or MLAs representing various authorities would be too pleased if the department proceeded with reforming governance without doing proper consultation with the health and social services authorities. Health and social services authorities are usually...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I believe that the method that is used is used by the doctors. I don’t actually know the exact terminology, but it goes to the regular process during the time when a child would be feeling ill. The doctors would go through a process that I’m not familiar with or not an expert to speak of at this time.

Thank you, Madam Chair. As I indicated, in the Canadian Blood Service and the cost, the cost of blood and plasma protein products is very volatile, so this huge shift is just a matter of two clients only. I think that initially when we were budgeting this, there was one client receiving some blood services. There are a lot of clients receiving blood services, but with this particular plasma protein there is one client receiving it. We got an additional two clients and then the amount went up immensely at that point.

This is something that would be hard to budget. This product keeps the people...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’ll add more to the Canadian Blood Service, blood and plasma protein products. The Canadian Blood Service is a non-profit, charitable organization that provides blood and blood supply products to Canadians. However, Health Canada is responsible for regulating the blood supply system. The high cost of this item really is, like the Minister of Finance indicated, it’s actually just two people, believe it or not, which consume a large part of this budget. Plasma protein products, there are only two people using that product and it resulted in a shortfall. The costs, the...

Just from memory I do believe there are two larger communities that have nurse practitioner positions. One is filled and the rest of the nurse practitioner positions are actually located in Yellowknife, but I don’t know how many of those are actually earmarked as nurse practitioner positions, off the top of my head.

One of the political directions that I have given to the department is to look at a strategy to bring doctors into it. As part of that strategy, as I indicated, would be the expansion of the nurse practitioner duties and other health professionals. We are actually starting the process now to try to develop something, whether it is going to be a model that brings doctors into the communities or doctors into the North or switching or expanding some duties of other health professionals in order to accommodate this. We are actually starting on the process now. Thank you.