Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to say a few things to the Minister and there are some specific things in the detail that I'll talk more specifically about. I just wanted to give the Minister a heads up on some of the stuff that's bothering me and the people in the Sahtu region as the Minister of Health of Social Services.
One of the things that we want to look at is you had some discussions around the wait time reductions. I think it's only given for the hospital here. We would like to look at how it's affecting the people in the region in terms of the medevac flights, the hospital services in our smaller centres. Sometimes the wait times are quite long. Sometimes it's pretty deadly. I'll talk more about the specifics in terms of the wait times. I know you geared it to Stanton. I come from a small community. When I come into Yellowknife and I make appointments with the clinics here, Mr. Chairman, or the hospital, you guys have some pretty good services here compared to our community. I must say, Yellowknife has some pretty good services. There are lots of programs, lots of services, lots of agencies, lots of doctors and nurses in this town, in this city. You guys have it pretty good in the hospital.
I'm looking at my region and I have no qualms about spending money on regional hospitals or...We have to bring the standards and level of care up in other communities. It's a priority. That's where I question, sometimes, the Minister in terms of capital investments or expenditures. I know the Minister is working hard with the rest of the other boards and agencies who are competing for dollars. There is a level of standard that we certainly expect in the Sahtu region that certainly people in Yellowknife, Hay River, Inuvik or Fort Smith expect. We are no different. It's just that we don't have the all-weather road, or we don't have other services that they have. The population is different. You serve a large population.
For us, we look at things like why do we suffer in some of these areas such as medical care, in terms of the medical care in our communities? I know that it's been improved, through the dentists, through the doctors, the issues there with the doctors, the locum doctors coming in, the agency nurses that are coming in. We are working on improving our permanent nurses in our communities. It's a real challenge for us, Mr. Minister. I know our board and our staff are working really hard to retain and to keep them in there. Certainly we need support from the larger centres to succeed at this area.
I know the Minister's hands are pretty well tied on how to increase the benefits to our nurses that we want to keep in terms of giving them some type of incentive benefits. We talked about the Housing Program that doesn't seem to be going anywhere because of other complicated issues that tags along with that. We're trying to be very creative in terms of how do we keep some good nurses there. There are some good agency nurses that come into our
communities. They are employed by the agency. I am happy to hear the Minister say that these agencies nurses are going to be curtailed and later on we will have northern nurses that will come and hopefully fill these positions. I know that's another challenge for the department. There are some good nurses coming out of that program. I have some other specific questions to that later on.
I'd like to ask the Minister about his plans for a long-term care facility in the Sahtu region. I see it in the other communities, in other regions. It's a huge cost to the department. I think we're one of the only regions that doesn't have a long-term care facility where we send our elders. We send them either to Fort Simpson or to the Aven Manor here in Yellowknife. That's something that I will continue to pursue with the department in terms of having a long-term care facility in our region.
The other one is that, I was quite taken aback and maybe I could get an explanation from the Minister on his opening statements on a consolidated clinic in Yellowknife may be a cost-saving factor in the long run. I'm not too sure how that works but I'd like to see...I guess I want to hear his reasons to have this consolidated clinic in Yellowknife, because I would like to see a regional health facility in our region. We have five health centres; they're deemed as a health centre. There's no real facility that puts us all together, almost like a mini hospital, but I don't know if we really want to call it that. I'm scared to use different terms because you're going to say, well, this is what he's saying. In Fort Simpson they have one, Inuvik has one, Fort Smith has one, the town of Hay River has one. We don't have one in our region. That's why I asked the level of standards of services. We still have to fly our people out. You know flying is...Sometimes the weather is not too good. This adds extra stress to our people when you do medevacs or flying them out. These communities can go to these health centres. For some of these services, we have to fly them out to Yellowknife or to Inuvik. I'm questioning that. Again, the Minister might provide me some really good answers, and I might not accept them. I want to say them for my people, because that's what we're faced with. If you want to go out to a dentist, we have to fly them out. Not like Smith or Hay River, they go to the dentist, they have offices here. They don't jump on a plane. We do as the people in the Sahtu region. Elderly care. They get seen by the nurse and if the nurse can't figure out what's going on, they make a phone call to Yellowknife. So, totally different services we have. That's what I'm saying. In Yellowknife and other larger centres you're very lucky to have these types of services. It's the regions that I'm really asking for, in my community.
The issue of homelessness, I hope that the Minister will somehow look at the issue of homelessness in our region. It may not fit the criteria as we've been hearing around these centres, and homelessness. The homelessness that I speak of is on an emergency basis for our young people that sometimes run around in the evenings and the weekends because of family issues that happen in their homes. There is no real safe home. I'm not too sure if there's any designation or any type of emergency safe home that you can give to people in our community that would take care of some of these children.
I'd like to ask the Minister later on about the initiative of having the rehab teams coming to our region. Services out of Yellowknife that are coming to our region, I haven't really seen a schedule on when they're coming in or how they're being worked out and how long they'll be in each of my communities of the Sahtu. When will that program begin? I just wanted those specifics.
Mr. Chairman, the last comment I have for the Minister in terms of health care is looking at the issue of alcohol and drug programs in our communities. I congratulate the Minister and his staff for the patience and determination to stay the course and to let the parties be, giving them the confidence that they can come together on this Nats'ejee K'eh healing centre drug and alcohol treatment program. I still think that the most effective programs that we are missing right now in the Northwest Territories is a comprehensive family program, a drug and alcohol program. We're still missing the boat here. I'm still going to make my pitch to have a family program in the communities, in the regions, to be on the land. A family program is going to make it work for us. I'd like to thank the Minister for hearing me out. Thank you.