Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the advice of the Member and will give it serious consideration. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The Chair recognizes Mr. Bell.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have a number of questions and many of the questions are points that we have already made in our report on the review of the draft mains. I guess the first area of questioning is around the alcohol and drug workers and the increased training that the Minister speaks of. I think that's certainly welcome. Increased pay and benefits and increased scope to change the job description and call on prevention workers. I think one of the things we have to be careful of here is that this transition is seen to be welcome by alcohol and drug workers and that they understand what's going on. Although it sounds like it's the right idea and in the right direction, I would like to ask the Minister about the level of consultation that's been undertaken with the frontline practitioners to assure that they are onside and that there is buy-in to this which seems to be a substantial and fundamental shift.

Thank you, Mr. Bell. Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, there is ongoing involvement with the frontline workers in this particular area. We also have, as well, the fairly clear unambiguous Chalmer's report that did its own review and survey. Many of us who have been around now for some time know from our own firsthand experience that we have committed to a course of action with alcohol and drug that, as I indicated, previously suffered from benign neglect and a fragmented approach to service delivery. So, Mr. Chairman, we are very confident that we, like the Member said, are making a shift, but a shift the right way. We have to commit to some of the funding issues. We have to nail down the training and ongoing certification and of even more importance, we have to bring the alcohol and drug workers into the fold as part of the service delivery model at the community level, so that they can play a complementary role to a lot of the other services and service providers that are at the community level. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Mr. Bell.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I certainly think that the consultation and the buy-in will be important, will be critical, in seeing that this is successful. I think certainly people who are in this field are passionate about what they do and we don't want to give some people the sense that we are trying to raise the qualifications, raise the criteria, raise the standards solely to run people out of jobs. I think the focus here has to be on improving the level of service to residents and working with alcohol and drug workers to improve the service and not seen to be something that is imposed on them.

I will look to another point, Mr. Chairman, and that is the committee's disappointment that we haven't been successful in rolling out a 1-800 number that would allow people to access nursing care over the phone from all jurisdictions in the Northwest Territories and help them make a decision as to whether or not they need to go into see their health care practitioners. Certainly, the document the Minister just unveiled today, the document entitled Do I Need to See the Nurse or Doctor that goes through a number of common ailments and indicates what folks may or may not do and gives them some sense of whether they need to see the doctor is very good and very important, but I think it's certainly something that should be done in conjunction with the 1-800 number. I think the two pieces together would make a very comprehensive package, especially given the run on emergency services that we've seen, at least in Yellowknife. I would like to ask the Minister for the trends and the numbers of people presenting at the unit, but it seems to me it is getting busier and busier and people are, instead of waiting for a good length of time to see someone at a clinic, if it's important, if it involves a child, if it's something that maybe they could make a phone call to a nurse, they simply have no other choice but to present at emergency and queue up for six to eight hours if it's a non-life-threatening situation. I think the 1-800 number, with the document the Minister has unveiled today, would have been a great complement and I think would have taken some of the strain off emergency services. So I would like to get an indication from the Minister what we are looking at doing with regard to the 1-800 number.

Thank you, Mr. Bell. Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, as Mr. Bell indicates, we, as well, are of the strong and continued opinion that the 1-800 number is an effective tool and would work and was planned to work very closely in conjunction with the book we handed out today. We intend to do two things. We have some signals from the federal government through their primary health care transition fund. They are interested in seeing if we can pursue this initiative in conjunction with Nunavut and Yukon, which was in one of our initial thoughts, but the logistics struck us early on as somewhat too daunting. The need was to try to get a system up and running. So we are going to go back and explore that particular option. As well, we intend to try again to build this particular action item into our business plan. It came in significantly over budget, about five or six times over budget, so there are two problems there. Maybe our estimations were overly optimistic and the cost to do this to the level we deemed necessary, we budgeted about a quarter million and the lowest proposal I believe was $1.4 million. So we didn't have the funds to proceed. We had to put that particular action item aside and move forward, but it's something we would still like to proceed with. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Mr. Bell.

That's certainly welcome news that the federal government is willing to step in and provide some funds and support our efforts. Certainly looking at a situation where we can combine the service with the other territories would provide efficiencies for us and economies of scale and I recognize that the estimates came in much higher than the department was looking at. I think we do have to recognize that the level of service would increase, but also I believe the number of physicians on staff at emergency could be reduced and we may not have to have the kinds of resources at emergency. I certainly think that oftentimes residents are forced to head up to emergency to see a doctor when clearly they may even recognize themselves that they don't even need to see a doctor, they just need to get some advice from a nurse. So I think there could be some money saved in that situation. I would like to ask the Minister also about the Finance Minister's opening Budget Address. He makes mention of training for prevention workers, but also enhanced funding for family violence shelters. I am wondering if the Minister can talk about the enhanced funding for family violence shelters.

Thank you, Mr. Bell. Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, this is a very modest part of the $1.4 million that we got for this particular area of service delivery. It's basically going to assist those shelters that are having some cash problems to make it through the year. So it's not an excessive amount of money. It's $96,000 that's going to be split up, I believe, among three shelters, Hay River, Inuvik and Fort Smith.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Mr. Bell.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just some clarity. Is that money going directly to the people in shelters or is this for shelter workers?

Thank you, Mr. Bell. Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, it's targeted for shelter operations.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Mr. Bell.

Thank you. One last question. Mr. Chairman, I know the Minister, when he was on this side of the House, was very concerned about our seeming inability to get blue-chip information from the Department of Health and it was a constant concern. As he knows, we've raised concerns about the number of children being apprehended and particularly it seems, the number of aboriginal children being apprehended is on the rise. We did ask the Minister for some information on that and a colleague of mine posed an oral question and received a response from the department about the ethnicity of children who have been apprehended and there is one column in the response from the department that suggests the ethnicity is unknown and it's a large proportion of the children who have unknown ethnicity. The department indicates that when a child's ethnicity has either not been entered into the child and family services information database or is not known, the ethnicity is considered to be unknown. I think this certainly raises a concern. It gives the impression that in some instances, the effort or the bother just hasn't been taken to even enter the child's ethnicity into the system. So of course we are unable to track this accurately now and unable to get the kinds of information that the committee was looking for. I think this was just a further example of our frustration in getting the types of information that we have been looking for. I am wondering if the Minister could speak to our seeming inability to track this kind of information.

Thank you, Mr. Bell. Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, when I first became aware of that particular issue as outlined by my colleague, it raised concerns with me as well. This child information system that we had spent a lot of time developing was obviously not without its gaps. Steps are underway to make what I understand was an optional column area when you are filling out the forms to be filled out. We want to make it a requirement. We want to be able to track all the children in our system, so that we can do the proper planning, see what the trends are and to do that I agree with my colleague, we do need blue-chip information. We are down that road, but clearly we have things to do. From what I understand, this is a relatively straightforward kind of adjustment to make. The system is there and can be modified to make that kind of information not optional but required so that you can't proceed to fill in the form until you fill in all the required areas. You can't advance to the next part of the form. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The Chair will recognize Ms. Lee.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, just a few general comments from myself as well. This is the first chance I have had to publicly acknowledge and thank the Minister for fighting hard for extra money for Stanton. I appreciate that very much and I know it wasn't easy. I realize that there was an extended period of denial on the part of the Minister as to the need for extra funding at Stanton, but he did come around and I thank him very much for that. I know that the staff and the clients that use the hospital appreciate that as well. I want to put that on top of my list of things to say.

It's well known that institutions we all have come to rely on went through a little bit of trauma prior to Christmas. I know that the management and everyone there is working hard to put everything into some state of normalcy. Talking to the people at my "Coffee's On Me" at Tim Horton's -- because you always get a good source of information at Tim Horton's -- there seems to be less anxiety on the part of the staff there. I think everyone still feels that there is a lot of work to do. At some point, you need that extra money to get the job done, but once you get the money you still have to manage it and meet the needs on a priority basis. I believe that my colleagues have already touched on the need for recruitment and retention plans and so forth. I know the Minister has been working on this. I just want to state that the focus has to be as much on the retention of it as well as the recruitment of these personnel with the new money that is available there. We have to really appreciate the burden that has been on the staff there to keep the place running. They have to be recognized for that. Any compensation packages that are being designed to recruit must take into consideration the needs of the people who are already there.

I think addressing the housing of allied health professionals will go a long way and I know that this is not a topic that the Minister or the government wants to get into lightly, but I believe that's something that has to be considered. It's an issue that keeps coming up by everyone who has any dealings with the hospital or the health care field.

If the people who come up here to work and provide health care services have to spend most of their money on housing and cost of living, it's just not attractive for people to come and stay. To offer a whole new package to new people that is not available to the ones that are already here, would not be a good thing for morale either. I know the Minister is working on classification of current positions to address some of the gaps in this area. I urge the Minister to keep putting his energy there and following it through.

Mr. Chairman, I don't think I need to say anymore about the fact that not addressing this recruitment and retention situation would end up costing us more and more of very scarce health care dollars.

I also wanted to say a couple more things on the health area. I have had occasion to be at the hospital more than I would like to be. Some happy news with friends having babies; people who get service from Stanton are very happy with that service. It's amazing even when the place was going through a lot of stress, the staff there are dedicated and they give a lot more than is called for, but there are some things that I am hearing lately that concern me. There is a constituent in my riding, for example, who couldn't - and I am not talking specifically about the hospital but health care services in general in the Territories - get diagnosed here. After months and months of trying, he ended up going south and spending his own money, a lot of money, thousands of dollars, to get a diagnosis. I am sure there are a lot of people out there who know of cases like that. I think that as legislators, we have to be very concerned when the services we are able to provide here or we are not providing here is causing people to go elsewhere and spend their money. Not only is that contrary to the kind of universal care that we believe in and the accessibility of health care for people, but it may end up in a situation where people with the money could go and get diagnoses, thereby creating different systems for different people. I don't fault at all those people who might feel the need to go south and spend their own money to get the diagnoses and treatment they need, but whenever that happens, it calls for reflection on our part to see what we are doing wrong.

Another point I want to make on health care issues is the $250 co-payment. I know this is an issue that has been brought up over and over. I have had the occasion to talk to the Minister about this in person. It appears there is a major gap in terms of who is having to pay for this medical co-payment. Those people who are fortunate enough to have government insurance or company insurance that pays for this, they don't have to deal with this. Many of our aboriginal population have their own programs that would pay for this. I think it's the working poor who have no insurance or other assistance in this area who are being penalized. They are the ones who are self-employed or working in a job that is not insured and often when they have to take time off with out pay to go for this sort of treatment down south or go for appointments or diagnoses, they are having extra things thrown on top of them. While $250 may not be a big amount of money for some, it can be a huge amount for others. I know that the Minister had indicated that he was in the process of reviewing this. I think there has to be a sense of fairness here and it shouldn't be done in a way that is penalizing those who are falling through the gaps.

Those are the three issues. If the Minister wants to comment, that would be great. I am going to save social services questions or comments for another time. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Mr. Miltenberger.