Shauna Morgan

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So I am following up with the Minister of Health and Social Services on more questions about licensing and regulation of paramedics.

So some provinces have self-regulating paramedic professional bodies which require the paramedics to purchase their own professional liability insurance when they get their license, but in other jurisdictions, like BC, Ontario, and Quebec, the paramedics are insured through their government employer, not -- it's not attached to the license. So has the Minister or the health authority first received any assurance from any of these provincial...

Okay, I will try to -- I will try to be more clear. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Is it fair to say that the cost savings are going to be found in making existing programs and services more efficient rather than in looking for programs and services that we can label as non-core and then eliminating them? Is that clear? Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Can the Minister actually give us any more detail on what is this primary care framework that is being worked on? What is a framework; what's the purpose of it? What's going to come out of this framework? I know we throw around a lot of jargon often about strategies and frameworks and plans but in this context, what is a primary care framework? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Chair. So with this unit, there's only a few parts of the business plan that speak to what the targets or goals are on this unit, and they -- that's on page 11 to 12 of the business plan, or page 95 to 96 in our full binders here. And they all have to do with the activity or the goal of defining what are the core programs and services to be delivered. And, in fact, when you look at the public fact sheets that the unit has put out in terms of what do we do, what do we want to achieve, again it says what do we want to achieve. We're going to take a system-wide approach and...

Mr. Speaker, I do support this motion, but first I want to step back and acknowledge that this is a very difficult subject and that the weight of history is heavy. Who has the right to decide what's best for anyone's children, especially what's best for Indigenous children? Who has the right to even stand up and talk about what's in the best interest of Indigenous children?

We know that throughout history, and even today, we've had settlers to this place stepping in and deciding what is best for Indigenous children, forcing those decisions through with violence and incredible harm to children...

Thank you, Madam Chair. So I know a barrier that's come up often in the past to data collection, as the deputy minister mentioned, was privacy concerns, and so there's been a lot of challenges around both different departments within the GNWT working together, working with RCMP, but also working with different NGOs, who are all trying to serve the same client, the same person who needs services.

But, you know, barriers to sharing this data, has that been overcome through this work, the privacy concerns or other barriers to sharing data? Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Can the Premier or staff perhaps explain in more detail or more plain language what is the work that these teams are going to focus on, like where people will see them out there, what sort of concrete difference we'll see in our communities once these teams are out there working. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair. So I will look forward to seeing some more tangibles in terms of goals if once the Premier confers with the Minister of ECC. But I think it's important we set clear targets for ourselves on this one. Thank you, Madam Chair. No further questions.

Thank you, Madam Chair. So I just wanted to touch on one item in the business plan that I didn't see how it falls under any of the other categories of things in the budget. But one of the roles of EIA, according to the business plan on page 23, is to try to coordinate or work across GNWT departments around land availability. And this is a topic that comes up often in this House because it's so fundamental to economic opportunities, you know, a number of different kinds of community planning. So it says that -- I mean, the overall goal is to increase land availability within community...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So if the department or the authority is finding that staffing levels are chronically low, why wouldn't the department or the authority plan to hire paramedics on staff rather than contracting them on a shift-by-shift basis? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.