Lesa Semmler

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'm going to I have answered that but what I'm going to say, it is not a specific instance. I have since Minister, five months, I have received numerous and numerous and thousands and thousands of dollars that people have spent on, you know like, myself, if I had to fly out if my child was sick or my motherinlaw was sick or my you know, my family member was sick and I had to jump on a plane and go and be with them, you know, I would be outofpocket as well. But I do get these BFs constantly and so this like I said, I am looking at it. I know that there is an area...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, within our medical travel policy, it, you know and I'm not sure if I mentioned it in this House before but there are many streams in our medical travel policy. There are the NIHB clients who fall under the NIHB rules. There are the Metis benefits. There are extended health client benefits clients that all fall those ones fall under the GNWT medical travel policy.

When it comes to regards to escorts, Mr. Speaker, there are certain criteria in the escort policy that must be you know, that the person whoever's travelling, if it is an elder, as the Member...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I can review it, but we do have the exception policy. So the role of the health care practitioner is to make the assessment, provide the recommendation for an escort. That recommendation must be explicit to the reason for a request. A lot of times the request is care and compassion, and I get that you know, if I could give everybody a care and compassion escort, you know, I would not be liked by my colleagues very much. You know, because it's going to be like, the amount of people that are travelling in the Northwest Territories I think we provided a...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, right now I can't commit to a secondment but what I'm willing to do is work collaboratively with SSI and other Indigenous governments to implement programs to support mental wellness. I'm also committed to supporting Indigenous governments and communities advancing these wellness solutions that are grounded in cultural communities and their perspectives. I welcome the opportunity to learn more about the vision. And I know that the Member has got some work that they'll be doing next week in their region, and I look forward to hearing and seeing what's coming...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker and I thank the Member for raising this concern. You know, the more and more we talk about this, the more and more it becomes normalized, and we're able to work together to try and find solutions.

The Department of Health and Social Services, two programs currently available. We have the community suicide prevention fund and the community wellness and addiction recovery fund, which is a fund that we actually, from recommendations last government, was asked to be put together and have less it's more flexible for Indigenous governments to access.

The community...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And thank you to the Member for this question. Currently, yes, nurses can train in the Northwest Territories to be obstetric nurses. How they do that, you know, there's multiple different ways. Back in the day when I trained, it was more of a mentorship, and you take certifications. Now it's a little bit more technical. So they do have to have hours. They do have to have a mentor. Currently, within our OBS, there are nurses receiving training and becoming fully competent in this specialized area. And as a result of this training, we have increased our capacity. And...

Yes. Thank you.

I'm not sure how I answer quite that cheaper and smarter, providing health care services in the Northwest Territories to, you know, birthing people that are waiting to have babies is always going to be cheaper. Having staff that we can, you know using locums, bringing locums in, they you know, that's been one of the areas that we you know, even with locums, that is we try to hire fulltime first and then if we can't hire fulltime, then we go to terms, which locums are more for physicians. That's the term they use for physicians. We use terms, term contracts with nurses, which are fully...

I don't have that level of detail. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the I guess, with the midwifery program that we're talking like, I can't speak to what has been done over the 20 years, but I know that Fort Smith was a driver and the history of midwifery in Fort Smith has been kind of the model. So as to when and where, what discussions have happened with Indigenous midwives, I don't have that information here on the floor today but like I said, midwifery, I mean, we want to be able to provide this service where there's no service available to deliver. So thank you, Mr. Speaker.