Tom Beaulieu

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Sorry about that. The department is completing a review. It is not complete. The plan is to expand the program from what was in only Yellowknife, to expand outside of Yellowknife. A few of the committees have been established. A territorial advisory committee has been established by the department to assist with a working group that has been developed, a territorial respite model framework that is the strategy that will take us to 2017.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thank you, colleagues. My condolences go out to Pierre’s family.

A church service for Pierre was held on Saturday, December 3, 2011, which I attended. Pierre will be buried in Fort Reliance on Saturday, December 10, 2011, alongside his wife, Judith, and son Lawrence, as was his wish. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I don’t have the date right now but I can get back to the Minister with the date.

Yes, it’s recent. It’s something that we’re attempting to do in order to help, for example, the Hay River Health and Social Services Authority to recruit physicians that can live in Hay River. Thank you.

The project to turn the operating room into a super clean operating room is out to tender now. Our objective is to have the operating room operational, I guess, on April of 2012, this coming year. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The reason that the Stanton Territorial Health Authority is not actively doing elective joint replacement surgeries at this time is due to ongoing renovations to the ventilation system. They have to achieve a super clean operating room in order to do joint replacements because there is high possibility of infection with that type of surgery.

The Member is right that this is an issue across a lot of jurisdictions who are unable to get physicians to go to a lot of their rural areas. However, our whole system in dealing with the federal government is not specific to recruiting doctors. We do have discussions with the federal government on the Health Accord and the federal government provides money through the Health Accord to the government, which portions of it can be used for recruiting. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I seek unanimous consent to deal with the Government Operations committee appointments motion I gave notice of earlier today. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

---Unanimous consent granted

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Department of Health is working with the Department of Human Resources to get a health human resource specialist involved in developing some sort of recruitment strategy for physicians that need to come to the Northwest Territories outside of Yellowknife to try to fill the vacancies. We have almost 100 percent vacancy across the territory, with the exception of Stanton and Tlicho.

Mr. Speaker, I seek unanimous consent to deal with the deputy chairpersons of Committee of the Whole motion I gave notice of earlier today. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.