Thank you, Mr. Chairman. On the area of governance, Ms. Lee is right; it is a balancing act.
We try to manage the dollars as best we can. As a department, we have a responsibility for standards of care and service delivery. We have 27 different pieces of legislation within the department. We have federal acts which we have to comply with in terms of standards.
I believe there is a need for a central coordinating agency to deal with this sort of thing. A lot of things can be devolved to regional or community boards, but certainly there are some things that, as a territorial jurisdiction, it is important they be maintained in some central agency, that being the Department of Health and Social Services.
The Member referred to my adversity to studies and reviews, and I think we always need to be examining how we do things to see if they are being done well and to see if we can do things better.
But I still hold to the fact this government, and this department in particular, has spent an inordinate amount of money in the past looking at and studying things. We will welcome the Member's input on how we might be able to gather information without going to such exorbitant costs in the future.
I do not have a particular vision of governance at this point. I have asked the department to put together some options because it is an important issue. Right now with the boards we have in the Territory, two are consistent with cultural claimant groups, the Dogrib and the Deh Cho. One represents a large community with two satellite communities, that being Yellowknife. Two represent small communities, Fort Resolution and Lutsel K'e. Two represent larger communities, that is Hay River and Fort Smith. Each have their own community health board. One represents a government administrative area, that being Inuvik, and one is territorial in scope, and has an acute care focus, and that is the Stanton Regional Health Board. That is quite a variety. I do not know if we are economizing the way we could if we had something the people could feel comfortable with that would address the need to be more standardized.
This is not something new. The issue of governance has been raised in previous Legislatures by MLAs. It has been raised by professional associations and members of the public. There is a fair amount of concern about governance. I will be tabling a formal response to the forum report sometime in April. I will be giving more thought to the governance issue. I will certainly be soliciting the input of Members on that.
The Member raises the issue of telehealth. We need to be innovative here in the North because we are a relatively small population. We are always challenged with our geographic considerations. Telehealth is one of those leading edge things which could serve the North very well. The Member is correct when she said we have to be concerned about access. I think access is better now than it ever has been with the internet. I am not sure what number of communities are linked to the internet at this time.
The dental care licensing issue is something I have had a chance to talk about, with some of the clinic owners with here in the North. They are very concerned that if they are precluded from recruiting foreign dentists, they will not be able to meet the demands for dentistry services in the North.
It was on December 31, 1999, that foreign-trained dentists could no longer write their national exams and become certified in Canada. This exam is a requirement under our legislation, the Dental Profession Act. This act was amended to omit licensing of Part 3 - Foreign Trained Dentists.
This is something we would have to work out with another jurisdiction. We could acquire services for the capability of writing exams for certification. That is a problem right now. I know it makes some of the people who have been in this business for a while wonder how they are going to sustain their practices without the availability of foreign recruits. I might add we have been very well served in the North in the past. It is probably an area where we need to look to Northerners being trained in, as well as so many other professions.
I look forward to the letter the Member is going to be passing along. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.