Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, there are no time constraints on a nurse practitioner. It depends on the patient the nurse practitioner is seeing and what flows out of that. One of the things that has been an impediment to how effective nurse practitioners can be is they haven't had the same support systems in place that are there for the doctors in terms of adequate waiting rooms, waiting rooms that are prepped and ready for their use and support and the issue of files and getting ready to see the next patient. So those are process things that we are working on to ensure that we can deal with it, so we can have the nurse practitioners be as efficient as possible. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Next up is Mr. Braden.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Minister, in response to a question a little earlier this afternoon in the areas of addictions, highlighted the successes we've had with the Tobacco Action Strategy. The groups of volunteers who have come on board with that, the initiatives shown by some of our municipalities, the WCB, and I noticed in some of the information that our colleague, Mr. Roland, provided on revenues, it looks like tobacco tax revenues are decreasing earlier than forecast, which means less product is being sold. So a tremendous success there.

Here is where I want to get into the topic, Mr. Chairman. Then the Minister said what do we do about drinking and alcohol. It's almost daunting, the circumstances there. The Minister then said how do we find those answers out. I just wanted to offer that we already have in play one way that we might be able to get some very effective answers and that is the upcoming review of the Liquor Act. I understand that a call for a contractor has gone out and perhaps the decision has already been made, but that process of going out on a territory-wide consultation, I am hopeful, Mr. Chairman, will generate some discussion, some debate and some input and hopefully some really constructive ideas on what our communities want to see done about the way we manage alcohol as a government. Also, Mr. Chairman, about the way we look at our mandate to promote awareness, to help people be educated about the impacts about alcohol, but also, as the Minister has been stressing, to help people be able to make responsible decisions when they choose to use something like alcohol.

I believe the government has sadly underfunded and under resourced the responsibility to do this with alcohol, but I am really looking at this upcoming review of the Liquor Act as a very good way of finding out from the communities and from the frontlines how they would like us to go about that. So I offer that, Mr. Chairman, as a

potential way of getting some answers to a very big question. I will stop there. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the Member's comment. The only thing I would like to add to that is when I went to this workshop with this Dr. Nordli from the Alberta hospital who is an addictions specialist, she did indicate in relation to that particular area, in her opinion and the statistics show, if the drinking age is raised, it has a direct impact on alcohol consumption. So it may be a subject that comes up through the course of the review on the legislation. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Mr. Braden.

You know, Mr. Chairman, I do have a number of other things, but I think I can pop them into our page-by-page detail review.

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Next I have Ms. Lee.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Further to the debate about the problem of alcohol, Mr. Minister, you might have noticed in the Social Programs committee report, we talk about the importance of the need to highlight the problem of gambling. I think of it as how a while back it was not often mentioned when one was describing Canada from sea to sea. Usually people described Canada from being sea to sea until national leaders started referring to it as from sea to sea to sea, to include the Arctic Ocean. In that way, I think that it's about time that in the North we acknowledge the problem of not only alcohol and drugs, but also gambling. I think the problem with gambling in the North is much more serious than people are willing to admit. In fact, it's so unappreciated, it's not really even being discussed.

As many people know and it's commonly understood in addiction language, it's not uncommon for people to leave one addiction and then jump into another. Some people might think they quit drinking and it's okay to be addicted to smoking because it's the lesser of two evils or some people might think if you get out of alcohol addiction, somehow gambling isn't as bad or vice versa. We need to make sure as a government to conduct campaigns wherever you are doing wellness or healthy living, we should be comprehensive in that regard.

I understand it's probably a whole new area because of the fact that so many NGOs and charitable organizations rely upon gambling revenue, on lottery tickets and other forms of gambling, to get their income. I am willing to admit that not all gambling per se is bad. Lottery tickets, raffle tickets, if it's for certain causes, and some people buy tickets to support the organizations the tickets are being sold for, but we need to address our mind to this. We need to do some studies on it. We need to evaluate how severe the gambling problem is in the North and how much people are spending, how much of the disposable income people and families are spending on gambling. In how many instances is an addiction to gambling getting in the way of families having a normal life? If you are in the communities, I know bingo is a very popular game and we don't want to see these things outlawed, but it's time we talked about whether or not there is a percentage of the population that are foregoing all their family income on bingo.

I worked at a bingo in Yellowknife once and I was so disheartened by what I saw, I swore that I would never step foot back into the bingo hall. I don't care what good cause it was, I could not tolerate seeing so many people giving up so much money and it was way beyond recreation. I could not believe how much money they were dropping and I thought I was making a good income. If I was to drop $400 to $500 a night on a bingo, there is no way I could afford anything. The people I saw doing it I knew weren't making that much more money than me.

I don't know if so much bingo going on in all communities, including Yellowknife...

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Can you pose a question, please?

I thought we were still on general comments, Mr. Chairman. I really wanted to put on record that we need to think about the problem of gambling right alongside alcohol, drugs and STDs. I agree with the Minister that that is a big problem that we need to address. I would like to know from the Minister then what kinds of things he can do to highlight the issue of gambling addiction and what sort of work is being done in the department to highlight that. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, we have seen the report by the Social Programs committee and the identified concern of gambling. We will make our best efforts to respond appropriately. I just want to point out that the Member is correct that gambling is an addiction that tends to get overshadowed by the more pressing issues of the alcohol and drug addictions or things like crack cocaine or other drugs that come onto the scene. It has a unique place in many of our communities because it generates so much revenue for so many good social agencies.

The community wellness workers, who were formally alcohol and drug workers, deal with addictions generically. So we will be working with the infrastructure we have on the ground to make sure the issue of gambling is on the radar, as it were, when it comes to doing business with clients. The Member is once again correct; we don't want to trade one addiction for another and you can come in with multiple addictions.

So I take the Member's point and concern of the Social Programs committee and we will be doing our best to respond to that. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Ms. Lee.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will be looking out for an action plan or a response from the department how the department addresses this issue in the coming weeks and months.

Another point I wanted to raise has to do with the human resource management of health care professionals. I know the government has been putting in more money

over the last couple of years to address the shortage of health care professionals, but I want to speak specifically to Stanton and other health care facilities in Yellowknife because they work in tangent.

I am hearing from the hospital that there are still a lot of shortages of health care professionals and nurses. I hear that there have been incidents where they had to close down a unit in surgery, for example, because of the lack of nurses in emergency. I am also hearing that overtime work is not being done much. Perhaps it's a cost-cutting measure because we are approaching year end. Maybe there is a lack of money or something. I know nurses have complained for a long time that they are being asked to do a lot of overtime but, at the same time, they do have to realize that there are a certain number of nurses who have to be on staff and if they aren't, it really gets in the way of their work. What is the state of affairs of human resources at the hospital and other health care facilities in Yellowknife in terms of nurses, doctors and other staff who need to deliver care and have we made any inroads in the last two or three years in terms of increasing these numbers? What is the report he's getting about the level of services they can provide at that facility? Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, we have the good fortune to have the public administrator of Stanton at the table with us today. I will ask Mr. Murray to speak to the detail. He's very conversant in the operation of Stanton. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Mr. Murray.

Thank you, Mr. Murray. Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We ran out of time just as I was finally getting somewhere with this Minster. I swear I thought I had him on the ropes and time ran out. This time I am going to reel him in slowly.

Mr. Chairman, the Minister had said that nursing practitioners, he had said in one way or the other, basically had free reign to practice. They could be as busy as possible. They weren't restricted by the number of hours or it didn't sound as if they were restricted by anything other than what's considered reasonable such as facility availability. That being said, we have restrictions on doctors seeing 20 patients per day. So quite conceivably the nursing practitioners could be seeing more patients per day than our doctors. Maybe the Minister could clarify that ambiguity that has surfaced. Again, nursing practitioners could see a lot more potential patients than doctors. Could the Minister clarify that point or problem? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, if memory serves me correctly, the question was were nurse practitioners limited to seeing one patient per hour. I indicated that there was no such restriction. In fact, if we were more efficient and effective in supporting them, they would be able to see an increasing number of patients. So we are hoping that when all things are working well that nurse practitioners will be seeing in the range of 17 patients a day or so. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Mr. Hawkins.