Tom Beaulieu

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, Mr. Chairman. The situation with the nurse practitioners that are being trained has been very difficult. The nurse practitioners have worked well in Hay River, as an example, where there’s a nurse practitioner there that they do a little more than the registered nurses. They’re able to do diagnosis and prescriptions. They’re valuable. We have a nurse practitioner in Fort Resolution and in Hay River. We have seven nurse practitioner positions in Yellowknife but a lot of what’s been happening is the nurse practitioners that are advancing from registered nurse to nurse practitioner...

At this time the department intends to continue its funding beyond the three years, that in the business planning process the department has put the $125,000 back into the 2012-13 budget. I understand that the City of Yellowknife will be continuing their funding and that we’re waiting for confirmation from either BHP Billiton on their contribution, or if they are moving their contribution to another initiative, then we will be looking for a third partner to continue. Thank you.

I will commit to providing that evaluation to the Member for Yellowknife Centre and also to the Social Programs committee. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. On the child and family services review, one of the main recommendations was the child and family services committees in the communities across the territory. We have advised the Beaufort-Delta along with all of the health and social services authorities, starting with the Beaufort-Delta right down to the Fort Smith Health and Social Services Authority, that we are going to start the training component, that they will work on a training component with the communities to start developing those committees in the communities. We’ve had, in addition to that, some...

Yes, we will work with the John Howard Society, if they were to continue to operate the day shelter, and we can put some of those requests into the new proposal or the new contract with the John Howard Society to ensure that those things do not continue in the day shelter. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Department of Health and Social Services has completed an evaluation of the day shelter pilot project. The evaluation has come back to us recently. We have given the evaluation to the John Howard Society for a response. Once we receive the response from the society, in addition to the evaluation, we will be looking at the day shelter for its effectiveness. Thank you.