Thank you, Mr. Chairman and my honourable colleagues, for their comments. I will speak on a couple of the broader ones that have been touched on by a lot of Members. There has been a lot of discussion on board empowerment, accountability and responsibility and of whether or not they are able to handle some of the functions and the
duties we have asked them to carry out in delivering health care programs and services. I think that is a legitimate concern. I think it is recognized, in our experience, certainly with the Keewatin situation, about some of the potential problems that can develop if a board is not cognizant, I think, of the public opinion and the public pulse, I guess, of concerns in respect to some of their delivery of programs and possible changes to those programs. As I have said in this House, the department, recognizing that, has set up a monitoring and evaluation unit specifically to strengthen that function in the department as a result of some of those concerns. We want to eliminate the possibility of those types of situations happening again or minimize the chance. We have various amounts of capability in the department in the areas of program delivery, finance and administration, board operations and human resources. I understand we have about 27 people who are in that area, but what we have done is not just drawing upon them, we have a couple of individuals who we task now to coordinate regular operational reviews of board operations. They will draw upon the resources we have in the department from those 27 individuals to put together an operational review team who can do the evaluations and provide ongoing support as required to boards that have deficiencies or that ask for assistance in certain areas.
I think there have been a lot of discussions on boards, establishing of boards and the powers we are giving to boards. We have to remember that this is nothing new. This is not a new concept. With the health transfer from the federal government to the territorial government in 1988, there was the establishment of boards throughout the Northwest Territories. Recently, of course, there has been a few more as a result of our dissolution of the Mackenzie Regional Health Services that caused us to set up some public administrators and some other boards to divide up the services that used to be held centrally at the Mackenzie unit. It is not something new in that respect. I know Mr. Ootes brought up some concerns that the medical association had raised about regionalization. Something I think we have to remember as northerners is that we have had these regional structures in place. The concern on regionalization in the southern jurisdictions is actually the opposite of ours in that they have had a lot of community-level services, hospitals in every community in the southern jurisdictions. They found that was uneconomical to continue to run a hospital in every community, so they forced or certainly strongly encouraged the development of regional boards to try to consolidate some of those services and try to eliminate some of the duplication and become more efficient in those jurisdictions. Whereas our situation is a bit of the opposite in that our facilities and our services have been in a developmental state ever since even before we took over as a government from the federal government. When the federal government had it as well, they were continuing to try to increase the level of services.
There has been some discussion as well, Mr. Chairman, about compassionate travel or escort travel. It depends, a lot of people lump the two together. Compassionate travel was a program that was administered under Income Support, and it primarily was dealing with individuals who expected some close family member to pass on. So it had provisions to allow immediate family members to go see their loved one before he or she passed on. Our programs we fund to the boards are primarily for escort travel, but, of course, a certain part of that escort travel can be deemed to be compassionate in respect to if you have, in some circumstances, a senior or an elder who is unilingual and not comfortable in travel or maybe with some of the treatment that he or she may be receiving or some of the diagnosis they have to understand or comprehend what is happening to them in order for them to make an informed decision. Boards do have some limited discretion to provide escort travel in those types of situations, albeit it is not ideal. I have said before, it was not one of the programs we chose to eliminate as a high priority. It is just faced with having to deal with meeting some of our fiscal targets. We had to make decisions on what programs could be offered and what programs could not be offered. I have said, ever since this issue has come up, a regular issue at public meetings, a regular issue that my honourable colleagues bring up to me, if there was a way to reinstate the program, I would. If any Members have suggestions on how to do that, of course, I would be more than willing and receptive to taking a look at that. We have to recognize though, if that program is reinstated, that some other program of the department or of this government will suffer as a result because we do not have new dollars. The finances have to come from somewhere.
On the issue of the strategic planning exercise that continues to be ongoing, Mr. Steen pointed out an interest in seeing what public consultations took place and some of the concerns and issues that came up from that. As you know, we worked with our partners, the boards, in carrying out the consultation for the draft strategic plan. I will have to ask. Each individual board did it in their own way. I am not sure how the Inuvik Health and Social Services Board undertook their consultations, but if there are transcripts or concerns that have been put together from his constituency from the Inuvik region, I will certainly provide that to the Member, to all Members for that matter.
The health professionals recruitment and retention have been an issue that has been highlighted and recently in the forefront of discussions in this House and in the public. I missed the timetable, unfortunately, Mr. Chairman, of having it tabled last week. I am expecting to have it tabled tomorrow. We do recognize in there that providing some support for our health care practitioners is critical to retaining them and minimizing the chances of burnout as a result of over work. I think somewhere Mr. Ootes pointed out, I believe it was, that the medical association had indicated health care workers were not supported enough by regional boards. I do not know if that is the case or not, Mr. Chairman, I think there may be a lot of issues that are ongoing at the board level. Everybody recognizes the importance of our health care professionals. I know in recent years, even at the community level, more and more so, since there have been a lot of programs passed on and more directed linkages between community councils and their trustees in the boards and the importance have been recognized of these health care professionals. I know in one of my communities they had a Health Care Professional Community Wellness Workers Day to recognize the significance of these individuals and just to show some of the appreciation that sometimes a lot of us take for granted, unfortunately, Mr. Chairman. Without getting into too many more details, I look forward to getting into more of those discussions as we go into detail of the budget, Mr. Chairman.
I will leave it at that for now. Thank you.