Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. I will now ask Mr. Yakeleya to please present the Social Programs committee's comments on this bill. Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Madam Chair. The Standing Committee on Social Programs conducted public hearings on Bill 7, Personal Directives Act, in the communities of Fort Smith, Fort Resolution, and Hay River during the week of June 22nd to the 28th, 2005, and in Yellowknife on October 11, 2005.

The Personal Directives Act will give northerners over the age of 19 the ability to provide advanced instructions about their health care should they become incapacitated and be unable to provide instructions. It is important to note that unless we enact this legislation, any instructions that a person would leave regarding their personal care, should they become incapacitated, would not necessarily have to be followed by their family or the health care professionals.

This bill would give standing to a personal directive made by a person and should be used in tandem with the Powers of Attorney Act, which allows a person to leave instructions about their financial matters in the event of an incapacity.

The committee noted that single legislation covering the use of personal directives exists in all other Canadian jurisdictions, with the exception of Nunavut. While the committee supports the bill, we are concerned about the lack of involvement by groups such as the NWT Medical Association and the Registered Nurses' Association of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut in the process thus far.

Next to the agents and the families, these professionals would be most involved in implementing the personal directives. We accept the Minister's commitment that these groups will be involved in working out the implementation plan, including the necessary training for these professionals.

The other concerns expressed by the presenters centred on public education, ensuring that local people had access to help in preparing the personal directive in their own language. There are no concerns expressed about the actual content of the bill; these concerns are all related to the implementation of the act. The Standing Committee on Social Programs will be closely monitoring the rollout of the Personal Directive Act to ensure that the process is kept as simple and streamlined as possible, and that adequate training and support is provided to health care professionals.

This concludes the committee's general comments on Bill 7. Individual members may have questions or comments as we proceed. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. At this time, I will ask the Minister if he would like to bring witnesses into the chamber.

Yes, Madam Chair, I would. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister Miltenberger. Does the committee agree?

Agreed. Thank you. I will ask the Sergeant-at-Arms to please escort the Minister's witnesses to the table.

Minister Miltenberger, could you please introduce your witnesses, for the record.

Thank you, Madam Chair. With me I have Ms. Gay Kennedy from Health and Social Services, and Mr. Mark Aitken from the Department of Justice. Thank you.

Thank you. I will now ask the committee if they have any general comments on the bill. Ms. Lee.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I have some questions on this. The bill, obviously, I support, and I think the intent of the bill has a lot of support in the communities, especially with senior citizens. It is about empowering people to make decisions about how they want to be cared for when they somehow get incapacitated for medical reasons or other reasons. I think that it is a good thing for the people to be given the power to write a living will, as it is called, to lay out what we want done to us, or not done to us, when we are not able to make decisions for ourselves.

There is much objection to the bill; in fact, there is a lot of support. Where the concerns are -- and there were many during our committee review process -- was the fact that the people that are going to be required to deliver this, if somebody has a living will that says I don't want to be left on a breathing machine if I am not conscious anymore, or I don't want to be in a situation where all sorts of things...this bill will give you the power to make that decision.

Everybody has different notions about what kind of quality of life they want to have. The thing is, it will be the doctors and the nurses and whoever other caregivers might be in these health centres, hospitals or private homes, who have to carry that out. There has to be somebody who has to unplug that. There will be lots of things that these people will have to do, and I am just really disappointed that nowhere during this process was anyone from the NWT Medical Association or the Registered Nurses' Association contacted.

From a common sense point of view, when we are sitting on this side of the House -- and we had a debate on TTC and many other things -- we like to think that department people, with all the apparatuses that they have, and hundreds of people that work on writing a bill, and think of an idea, and carry out policy, that they would be talking to each other. We often learn that that is not the case at all.

I just want to make note of the fact that the department could have done a better job in consulting with those health care professionals, but this has been pointed out to the Minister, and the Minister made a commitment, during our committee process, that they are going to be setting

up some kind of training program, and they will be partnering with the Nurses' Association and other health care professionals to do that. I just want to get a commitment from the Minister, again, that he will make sure that all those parties are involved in a serious and substantive way, and that his department will work with them to make sure that those people who have to carry these out, are going to be well trained, well informed, and well involved. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, we have noted the concern of committee, and the Member in committee, and we note it here and we will follow through. In fact, if I could, just for the record, note, we have a number of training sessions already scheduled, and we have written to the Medical Association and the Nurses' Association. We have a major training session on November 17th in Stanton, and then on November 18th with the Yellowknife Health and Social Services.

Again, on the 18th, we are going to do the long-term care, as well. December 6th we are going into Hay River, and we are going to try to book with the other authorities as quickly as we can, in terms of training and review of this bill. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. We have Mr. Braden next. Mr. Braden. Oh, Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I like this bill, Mr. Chair, in terms of where it is leading, and I just wanted to ask for support. This bill is also going to be looked at in terms of creativity in communicating to the older people in the first language. How is this going to be rolled out? I just wanted to ask about some of the implementation processes in rolling this out in the aboriginal languages for people who are going to need that type of information in their first language. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mahsi, Mr. Yakeleya. Mr. Minister is passing it. Ms. Kennedy.

Thank you, Ms. Kennedy. Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to commend the Minister and his staff for doing this bill. My uncle is in the hospital with cancer, and he is going to need this type of service. The practicality and the reality is going to make a lot of difference to our people and how it is being rolled out. I am not too sure how long he will be with us, but I understand that the Minister is going to Stanton next month to give some training to the professionals over there, so I look forward to seeing how this is.

I think he is going to be in a state where he is going to be incapacitated, and it is very important to help the family in this type of matter. I just wanted to state that. I have no other concerns. I support this bill 100 percent.

Mahsi, Mr. Yakeleya. That was a general comment. I have Mr. Braden on the list. Mr. Braden.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am here to express my support for this bill. It is a very good companion to one that, I believe, was passed in the previous Assembly, which gave people far more certainty and authority over their fiscal and financial affairs. This one, as I look at it, is a companion. It says, here is how I would like my living conditions to be organized.

One of the bits of testimony or comment that we heard that I found very useful on this, Mr. Chairman, was in Fort Smith. A nurse came to appear before our committee, and she related to us some of her experiences as a nurse dealing with people who are in the last days of their life, and the great anxiety and confusion, sometimes, and conflict that occasionally happened, especially with patients of different cultures who may have language difficulties, on top of cultural differences in a western or modern clinical hospital situation. The impression that I got from listening to the nurse was that if the ability that people will have through this bill is well communicated, and if it is simply and effectively implemented, then I think we will be doing a considerable service to people who can then have the kind of certainty, and the kind of treatment and care, and the dignity that is important to them and their families, even when they go into these clinic or hospital situations.

I was a bit surprised to find, Mr. Chairman, that even now if I were to sit down and write out what I wanted to happen to me in this kind of event, the medical practitioners or the legal people would not necessarily have to follow it. They would have an option of making a choice for me, or perhaps my family members or somebody else who would assume authority, would make those decisions for me. This act will set it out absolutely clearly, that my wishes are the ones to be followed. That is a very positive and welcome thing.

There are two aspects of this that I wanted to bring to the floor and ask the Minister about. One was an inter-jurisdictional area, where we prepare the certain document to conform to NWT standards or protocols. Most other provinces already have this kind of thing. Will we recognize, or do we recognize, their personal directives acts or whatever they may call them?

Mr. Chairman, would our personal directive that somebody created on an NWT form be recognized in another part of Canada? Do we have some inter-boundary connection here, Mr. Chairman?

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yes, Mr. Chairman, we have built in reciprocity in this legislation with every jurisdiction except Nunavut, which has no legislation. With the chair's permission, I would ask Mr. Aitken to speak in quick detail of what is entailed in that reciprocity. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Mr. Aitken.