Wendy Bisaro

Madam Chair, I didn’t hear an answer to the customer service issue there, but I’ll just leave it at that. It was a comment.

I did want to ask the department about another change which apparently is in the works and it has to do with recruitment of physicians. There has been some talk about the development of a physicians pool to try and deal with the absence of physicians in some communities; Hay River, for instance.

I’d like to ask the department with regard to this change in our system to go to a physicians pool. Is that something which is still in the works? When can we expect to see that...

Thank you, Ms. Mathison. Mr. Hawkins.

Thanks to the deputy minister. I guess, as I tend to always do, I would suggest that standing committee would be better served by getting the drafts earlier rather than later. You may find that input from standing committee on the draft may have some impacts on the next draft. I know we usually get stuff when it’s kind of finished, but very often if we get it when it’s halfway through or three-quarters of the way through, it will develop a faster and better product in the end.

The last thing I wanted to mention has to do with accountability. That’s another area that the directorate, I believe...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’d like to speak to this motion a bit. I discussed some of the statistics when I made my statement earlier today, but I wanted to remind people that in the NWT, if the rates of physical activity of our people – young people and older people – are going down and our rates of obesity are increasing, that does not bode well for our health system. It means we are going to have more and more demands and more and more of a drain financially on our health system and on our government.

We have pretty good services here in the city of Yellowknife and we have reasonably good...

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Mr. Yakeleya, your time is up. I’ll put you back on the list, if you wish. Next on my list is Mr. Dolynny.

Thanks to the Minister. The Minister mentioned a number of things that the department is hopeful will create a reduction in the cost of our medical travel. Could I get an indication from the department as to how much money we are, how much federal money is going into medical travel at this point and can I get an indication of what kind of cost savings the Minister is talking about when he mentions the programs that he mentioned.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I have a number of questions on this page. I wanted to start off with looking at the federal funding that we have, which is due to expire in a year’s time, give or take. The information that we have currently indicates that much of the federal funding is being used for supplementing, I guess, our medical staff, doctors, nurse practitioners and the other large piece is supplementing our medical travel.

I mentioned in my comments the other day that I’m quite concerned with the fact that we haven’t yet got an extension of this federal funding. I appreciate the fact that the...

Mr. Speaker, thanks to the Minister. I appreciate that commitment and I look forward to the information. I think the Minister said that he has responded to the letter that came from the nine organizations. I don’t believe the Minister copied us on that letter. If he did, I haven’t seen it yet.

I’d like to know from the Minister what the Minister’s response was to the four or five requests that were in the letter that he received in December. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to follow up on my Member’s statement. I have some questions for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment with regard to the focus that we put on heritage in the NWT and in the activities of the department. I’d like to ask the Minister if he could explain to me and to the House what we currently do to support heritage activities. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The arts are alive and well in the NWT. We are blessed with visual arts, music, film, dance, and written word artists, to name just a few. This government recognizes the contributions that arts performers make. We recognize the positive impact on the economy from the arts and that they are essential to the preservation of NWT culture. Funding for the arts is provided through the Education, Culture and Employment budget, and we present awards for culture through the Minister’s Cultural Circle. But there’s one aspect of our lives and our history which needs greater...