Thank you, Ms. Lee. The honourable Member for Mackenzie Delta, Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. About my Member’s statement in regard to the notices that have been issued to communities on the cancellation of services, especially in the areas of health care and the clinics, which will not take appointments or be able see a doctor…. I would like to ask the Minister: exactly what is her department doing to deal with the nurse shortages in our small communities in light of the desperate situation we are having in Inuvik? Again, the health and well-being of those residents are critical. Ensuring that they have health care being provided will ensure that we have healthy communities and healthy people. I’d like to ask the Minister: exactly what are you doing to try to resolve this situation where we are shutting down health centres for emergency cases only?

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. The honourable Minister of Health and Social Services, Ms. Lee.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. First of all, I want to advise the Member that notices that the Members get and the Member for Nunakput gets with respect to any reduction of services in health centres — I get a copy of them, and as soon as I get them, I inquire to find out what is causing those reductions in services. Sometimes those causes are very…. We had a water situation, in fact, or sometimes it’s a scheduling problem and other situations.

But I do agree with the Member. By and large, we continue to suffer from a lack of nurses and other health care professionals in the Territories as well as in Canada. We are looking on a daily basis to make sure that reductions of services are avoided as much as we can. Having said that, I consider this my number one priority is to address the service needs in smaller communities.

We understand that we have a fiscal environment that we have to work in. We understand that we

have the pressures from national and international environments with respect to health care professionals, but I consider it’s the most important job I have as the Minister of Health to look at everything possible. I believe that the only change we can really make is to look at the territorial staffing model of doctors, nurses and other health care professionals. I am working on a proposal to come to our Standing Committee on Social Programs to work with our Members and perhaps a joint committee on rural and small communities to see how we can improve the access to services and levels of services in small communities in all social envelope areas for which I am responsible.

Mr. Speaker, this issue has been around for some time. I know that the Inuvik Health Board had looked at some alternatives. One of them was looking at the possibility of recruiting professionals from Asia, the Philippines, and bringing them to the Inuvik region. They would work in those communities if those positions were available to them, but because of the collective bargaining agreement and under the Health Act, there were some challenges there. I think that was one of the solutions that was looked at to resolve that issue.

Has the department considered revisiting that situation, especially for the Beaufort-Delta region? Because this seems to be a systemic problem specifically to the Beaufort-Delta region.

That will be one of the things that will be looked at, understanding, though, that Nunavut tried that method and that it didn’t quite work out as well as they had hoped. Obviously, that is one of the considerations, but we want to make sure that we do it right.

The second thing is the nomination program that Minister Miltenberger has talked about, bringing more people from southern jurisdictions. That has an implication for making it easier for the professionally trained people to come from other areas. We have to work on the licensing issues. We have to work on making it easier for them to come.

Another thing we need to work on is to provide incentives for people to practise in rural communities, and that is not easy to do because of the collective bargaining situation and the financial restraint that we have. But I’m committed to looking at everything we can to see how we make this happen. It will not be easy, but I am working on a proposal.

Mr. Speaker, on a recent tour to Tsiigehtchic along with the Minister of Health and the Minister of Justice it came up that there was an individual who is presently working in Holman who does fill in, in Tsiigehtchic during breakup and freeze-up, but the nurse says she’s willing to stay longer. I think that if the nurse is willing to do that, why is that not happening? We have a committed

individual who’s willing to stay longer in a community. We should do everything that we can to accommodate that person to stay as long as they can in a community if they’re willing to do so.

Has the Minister looked into that to find a way to accommodate that nurse and the community, who seem like they get along pretty well? She’s there every breakup and freeze-up. She’s willing to stay longer. So I’d like to ask the Minister: has she had an opportunity to look into that and see if that individual can stay for four months or six months in the community of Tsiigehtchic?

Yes, I have looked into that and I am looking to extend her stay in Tsiigehtchic. The only thing is that she fills spots in other areas of the Beaufort-Delta service area because she’s employed by the authority. So if she’s taken away from somewhere else, there’s that whole picture.

I do have a communication going to the Member indicating that I’m looking into that. Hopefully, I’ll have a precise answer before I get back to you.

Thank you, Minister Lee. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Krutko.

Mr. Speaker, can the Minister give me a breakdown on exactly how many times these notices have been given in regard to the shortage of nurses in the Beaufort-Delta communities so we can see how often the nurses aren’t available versus being available and also the movement of nurses from one community to the other just because of the fill-in?

I’d just like to ask the Minister: can we get that information as to exactly when the health centres are on emergency watch versus the communities that are functioning versus the communities that aren’t?

It should be noted that all centres in Beaufort-Delta right now are fully functional. We have never had a situation where we have no nurses. We have nurses where there are supposed to be nurses. We have nurses; it’s just that the services are reduced to poor services because they can’t get a backup

—

they’ve had too

many hours working and they need a break

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or

there is a breakdown in water facilities or something like that.

But I will get back to the Member on maybe over the last six months how many times the services had to be reduced and in which centres.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. The honourable Member for Tu Nedhe, Mr. Beaulieu.

Mahsi cho, Mr. Speaker. In my Member’s statement today I spoke about repairs to Highway No. 6. I’d like to ask the Minister of Transportation why the repairs to at least the worst sections of Highway No. 6 are not being done when $1 million is set aside specifically for this work this summer.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The honourable Minister of Transportation, Mr. Michael McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member is correct. There was in the June budget $1 million budgeted for work on Highway No. 6. The work is ongoing. It’s a late start in our season, to have our budget approved in June. We have done the design assessment. We’re working on gravel sources, and we’ll continue to do so.

The Member is correct that work can commence very quickly once all the design, once the drainage, once all the surveys are done — gravel production, everything else is completed. In this case we still are doing the design and we have completed the majority of what we plan to do. We want to go into the community and share that information with the community that the Member represents and move forward. Providing everything is in order, we hope to have the work done by the end of November, Mr. Speaker.

A quick, final question. I was wondering if the Minister could commit to passing information on about the new schedule and scope of work for repairs to Highway No. 6 to me as soon as possible so I can pass the information on to my constituents.

Mr. Speaker, certainly, we can commit to doing that. We’ll share the information with the honourable Member and also give him the time and the dates that we plan to go into the community of Resolute and share that information with the community. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Hay River South, Mrs. Groenewegen.

Mr. Speaker, I have some questions about the Deh Cho Bridge. I’m not sure who’s handling that file now, whether it’s the Minister of Transportation or not. Having said that, there’s been quite a bit of progress made on the Deh Cho Bridge. I had occasion to drive to Yellowknife once this summer and saw the platform that was built out into the middle of the river from which the work is being conducted, and a significant amount of progress has taken place. However, it was communicated in a media article about a week ago that the bridge is about six weeks behind schedule and that this may have an impact on the work that’s been done to date.

Now, when all the discussion was taking place on the bridge and the concession agreement, there was reference made to cost overruns. I wasn’t very satisfied with the description of cost overruns. Basically, it said anything unforeseen. So I don’t know if the delay in the schedule to date on the Deh Cho Bridge would have been classified as unforeseen cost. This is on the minds of a lot of Northerners. They’re wanting to know, if this delay in the schedule is going to cause the price of the bridge to escalate, who’s going to pay for it?

Thank you, Ms. Groenewegen. The honourable Minister of Transportation, Mr. McLeod.

Mr. Speaker, we’re on schedule. The bridge is anticipated to be built by 2010. There is, as the Member indicated, some slippage in time frames. At the initial start of this project some material didn’t arrive as was expected, and also the high water deferred the initial start-up.

We are behind a little over a month, a month to six weeks. We expect to have all the four piers done over the winter, and we don’t expect any cost overruns.

So more specifically, then, if the contractors who are involved in this incur additional costs because of the six week delay and getting into colder temperatures and so on, just for the benefit of the public who are interested, these additional costs will not be borne by the Government of the Northwest Territories. In fact, the fixed price contract stays.