Shauna Morgan

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So following up with further questions for the Minister of Health and Social Services and picking up on some of the things I mentioned in my Member's statement. So my first question is do paramedics have adequate training to engage in the common primary care activities that are needed in small community health centres, such as pre- and post-natal care, chronic disease management, or, for example, recognizing when the symptoms in a stable patient might lead soon to a serious decline; do paramedics have the right training to address those things? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So that seems positive.

I also wanted to ask, in terms of film, the producer's incentive program, my impression was that last year -- or maybe it was started a couple years ago, but that it was considered a pilot and that it was being paused to be able to evaluate the success of the pilot. However, I do see that we have $200,000 in this main estimates. Does this mean that a decision has been made to go forward with the program not as a pilot but as an ongoing program, or -- and is that evaluation complete yet? Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So can the Minister clarify whether paramedics that are operating in community health centres, are they required to be supervised by a health authority employee such as the nurse in charge at all times, or are they permitted to work shifts alone? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So I first wanted to -- I think it's part of this section. I always get confused. The -- okay.

The film commission, my understanding is that we're establishing a new film officer position. I can't actually see where it's reflected here. But can the Minister confirm whether we are intending to add a new film officer position under the NWT Film Commission? Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Speaker, many things about health care keep me up at night. One concern I haven't spoken about yet is the department's growing focus on integrating private contracted paramedics into both small community health centres and our hospital emergency departments.

To be clear, paramedics do difficult, important work. Their specialty is in responding to emergency events and stabilizing patients for transport to take them to other medical professionals with broader scope. In the NWT, paramedics have mainly been working for municipalities with ambulance services, like Yellowknife, working for mines...

Okay. Yeah, I did notice that there didn't seem to be anything from 2025. So does the Minister know when that reporting will catch up? And, secondly, can there be any commitment that the GNWT's role or actions can be kind of extracted so that we can look at those separately and then keep track of whether the GNWT is fulfilling its own commitments as part of this partnership? Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Okay, thank you, Mr. Chair. Does the GNWT produce any reports identifying, like, what commitments the GNWT is making as part of this dialogue? I know, again, this is a partnership where you can't control what all the partners do and you can't control the -- all of the outcomes of the work, but you can identify what you as one partner can do and hold yourself accountable to that. So is there any records or reports of what the GNWT itself has committed to do in these dialogue meetings and then sort of tracking of whether we've done it or not, how long did it take us to do it? Is that available...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The last topic I just wanted to address, in the business plan on page 21, it identifies work specifically around the Mackenzie Valley operational dialogue. And I know that a lot of people have put a lot of work into this, stakeholders from lots of different organizations, different levels of government, industry, and I think there's also been a lot of disappointment as to the concrete or tangible outcomes or results that have come out of all these meetings and all this effort, and it's not really clear from the business plan either what concrete has come out of it. You...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I mean, I would never dispute that, absolutely, Indigenous governments need to be at the table and negotiating on their own behalf. I guess I would love to see if someone could do some analysis at some point as to whether our level of attendance at conferences and conventions and things and, you know, ITI staff in particular, I think, tend to -- and the Minister, I know, spends a lot of time traveling to various places going to these conventions and conferences. But whether our level of attendance, if we ramped it up by 200 percent, would we then, you know, get 200...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So I appreciate the Minister getting back to us on that. And further on the theme of socio-economic agreements, in the business plan, on page 16, it lists targets related to the socio-economic agreements around increasing NWT Indigenous and resident procurement and employment stats in the natural resource sector overall. So right now in the business plan, it just lists the figures from 2024 under progress to date, but there's no sense of whether things are getting better, things are getting worse, how the trends have changed over time, and so it's hard to measure progress...