Lesa Semmler

Mr. Speaker, I can't speak to the specifics. There are many instances where residents of the Northwest Territories end up in hospitals in the south. Many of them have come to the floor of this House. If people are leaving the territory on their own for a vacation or out of territory visiting and they end up in hospital, that -- you know, there is -- and we've -- I've shared the information that, you know, people leaving the territory should assume travel insurance when -- because anybody leaving the territory that's not referred out of the territory by medical travel, then there's no medical...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. And, yes, we do fund Indigenous governments. We have multi-year agreements with many Indigenous governments, and they are in those communities. And so with the community wellness and recovery fund, we do provide Indigenous governments to be able to provide that service. It's transferred directly to them, and they run that however they choose to use it, you know. Based on that, it's used for wellness and recovery.

We also as a government have opened a -- you know, we have two THARP, which is transitional housing and recovery programs, in the Northwest Territories now. We...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. It's very -- I guess it's hard to explain it. It's very confusing because it's -- a lot of this is flow through, billed back. And I know that the last couple of years we have had increased funding to be able to bill back a lot of -- to allocate funding to this through NIHB to pay for the full costs. That's what we've been negotiating. We had a two-year negotiate agreement with NIHB. That's why it looks like it's gone down over the last couple of years because we hadn't had to budget as much to this. However, we still have a portion that we have pay for those that don't...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, what I have tasked NTHSSA to do is to do the patient journey through the primary care clinics in Yellowknife as this is where this issue has come up on and on again. And as part of that process, they will begin this -- I believe the patient journey, they're putting their metrics together, and they'll start this on April 1st. The booking -- with that system, just like with the Deh Cho journey, many recommendations came out of that. And using that journey, then we were able to come up with some recommendations on where to implement different dollars, program...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate the question from the Member. You know, I know that this funding amount is not enough, and the funding that was in the previous year's budget was a one-time funding because of sunset funding. It's gone back to the original amount that was -- that's currently core funding for this program. However, this program is currently under review under the health sustainability unit, and I think -- I believe it's the first one that's going to come back with recommendations on this line item so that we could -- once I have those recommendations and, you know, that will...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, as per the service standards, the most recent conversation that I've had with NTHSSA and the department, within the direction that I've given them, is to be able to come back with a timeline, I hope before March, as to implementing service standards so that we can brief committee so that we can, you know, go out to the public. Because I too have raised that issue. I have constituents that continue to receive medical travel the day before and so this is not -- and I've said it in this House that it's not acceptable. We can't expect our sick residents to be...

Yes, the reason why that budget has decreased, that budget line item has decreased, is that that has been transferred to housing as that's the funding change -- the amount is the difference in the change that the Yellowknife sobering centre -- for the staffing. Thank you.

Thank you. I am going to turn it over to the ADM.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I have brought this back to NTHSSA and they have not brought back the -- a timeline but however we have had many conversations on what -- versus buying a program that's going to need to meet our OCIO standards for health information versus -- and that's not going to connect into our booking -- our EMR -- or EHR right now. So I will follow up with where we're at and if there is further discussions or options on that. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. This is the conversation that all health Ministers across Canada are having right now and, you know, there's -- in every jurisdiction, there's a little bit different going on everywhere. And one of the issues -- and I don't want to take up the whole time to -- so I am going to be very -- when we have a -- we have a public healthcare system in Canada. That's the free system that's insured services. We're already constrained by the amount of, you know, healthcare staff that are provided. Private clinics are usually -- they can charge more, they can pay their staff more...