Lesa Semmler

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, home care provides -- in all of our communities, we have home support workers and they provide bathing and making meals, nursing services for wound care and health checks, help with organization, and taking medication. In some communities, they provide palliative care for those who are dying and want to be close to home and family members. They loan out equipment, such as bathroom equipment and walkers. They do provide respite care to help out in the home so caregivers can get a break. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I am unaware of how many children are on the waitlist in the Tlicho region. But what I can do is I can commit to getting those numbers. I also would like to highlight that, you know, the waitlist, yes -- however there is a waitlist, our speech and language pathologists that we do have are seeing -- and what they're doing is they're triaging so they're seeing youth under 5 and then youth between 16 -- 6 and 17 who have severe needs, so safety issues -- so speech-language is not just for speech but it's also for swallowing, so if there -- we're utilizing the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I don't have the actual numbers of how many speech-language pathologists that we have. But what I do know is that many of those positions that we do have across the Northwest Territories are vacant. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, diversity and inclusion training is available to all health and social services system staff, including specific workshops on the diversity, inclusion in the workplace training, 2SLGBTQQIA+ 101 inclusive workplace awareness training, mitigating unconscious bias training. They also have PDI that they can use for other training. There is other self-learning training if health and social services staff wish to take on, but these are the training that we do have through diversity inclusion. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And you know, Mr. Speaker, I would be glad -- and I know the Member, you know, has previously invited me to visit her communities that she is the MLA for and those discussions that we can have during that time. But just to be clear, the discussion is at a high level right now. Like, MACA does have money for first responders. I can't speak to the details of that. I have enough under my own portfolio, but I know health and social services does not -- like, the nurses in the health centre are not first responders. So we're trying to work together to try to see what can we...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, all of our home -- all of our communities have home support workers and in in the larger centres, we have home care nurses. In the smaller centres -- smaller communities that have nurses, they have a task as part of one of their duties is to do the home care assessments for seniors at home. And like I mentioned in all of the other, they're the ones that do the assessments as to what that elder needs in their home and then they assign those duties to the person -- or the home care worker in that community. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, with any new process that rolls out, I think in any department, there are always some difficulties. The process right now currently and the concern is that there are slots available for booked appointments. There's a number of people that they can do as same-day appointments, and then what happens is is that if you arrive earlier enough on time they'll let you know that they've only got enough space for walk-ins and they don't want you to -- like, they'll tell you that. And so it's not that there isn't walk-ins. And so we're not going to review the program...

Mr. Speaker, I wish to table the following document: Tobacco and Vapour Products Control Act and Smoking Control and Reduction Act Three-Year Annual Report 2020-2023. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, as I said, the program is ongoing. There are small changes that are being implemented as we move along. You know, we'll continue to hear from the Members and the constituents but from the other side too is that people are grateful that they're able to have appointments, they can preschedule them, they're triaging those that are going in early in the morning that are fasting. You know, there's different things that are going on. They're working with their -- you know, within the authority to make sure that prioritizing blood work gets booked in. So there are...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I mentioned, you know, this is a new program, so we've gone out publicly saying this is a new program. What this program has done is over the past month that it's been rolled out, we have seen 200 more patients this last month than we normally do in the lab in Yellowknife and so because there's changes, because, you know, there's certain things -- before we were getting a lot more complaints that there wasn't some structure, there wasn't time to book appointments, there wasn't same-day appointments in the lab, so right now what they're working on is ensuring that...