Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thanks to the Minister. I guess I need to ask the Minister to explain to me what “expediting the process” means. When, after a Cabinet decision is made, can something actually happen that will be felt in the realm of the public and our residents and our workers are going to be able to see the effect of? Thank you.

Once a decision is made at the standing committee level and brought back to Cabinet, then we will roll out the program. Whether it be within a few months from now, then certainly within the new year we want to roll out the program once the decisions are made. Mahsi.

Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. The honourable Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my Member’s statement talked about the Sahtu regional wellness centre. That’s the hope for the people in the region. I want to convey strong messages from my people. When the Minister and I had a tour in the Sahtu region there a couple of months ago, services that we see in other regions have this type of wellness centres or hospitals, as they call them. I would like to ask the Minister, can she identify a schedule when the needs assessment in terms of the services and the

facilities in the Sahtu can be identified and looked at?

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The honourable Minister responsible for Health and Social Services, Ms. Lee.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I did have the opportunity to travel to all the communities in the Sahtu with the Member in August and by the time we got to the last community, I thought it was interesting that everybody thought we were building a hospital in the Sahtu right away. That was a really good discussion that we had with the residents of Sahtu and, as I mentioned already, the department is engaged in doing a long-term capital needs study of all of the health facilities in all our regions.

We recognize that many of the buildings that we have in our inventory were handed down to us from the federal transfer and we need to take a really close look at the status of the existing buildings, as well as looking at needs for new ones going forward. I do recognize that the Sahtu, as a region, has a need for a wellness centre and we will have to work with the residents and the leadership to decide when and how, and we will begin that process.

The Minister certainly has conveyed some of the desires and wishes of the people in the Sahtu in terms of hoping they would be very successful in terms of identifying future dollars to build a regional wellness centre for the people in the Sahtu.

Aside from that, can the Minister provide some more information in terms of what type of services can be devolved into the Sahtu region, such as midwifery, palliative care, a stronger diabetic program, that will start filling the gaps and start seeing some more devolution of programs and services from this government to the Sahtu government?

The Foundation for Change Action Plan for the department, which has gone through the review of the Standing Committee on Social Programs and one that will be released later this month, speaks very much to the issue that the Member is raising. We believe going forward that we need to strengthen primary care services in our communities, and that includes chronic care management, such as for diabetes, working on prevention, working on strengthening the capacity in the communities at the front line so that our communities are equipped and able to address lots of these issues. I look forward to engaging with all the Members and stakeholders in discussing this further.

Sahtu is a relatively new authority that has been around for about five years. It has progressed very rapidly in terms of services it provides and we will continue to work with the authority to move forward.

The interesting note I’m taking from the Minister’s comments in terms of the plans or needs assessments for health facilities in the Northwest Territories, certainly the Sahtu would be, I hope in this government, high on the list of priorities for a regional wellness centre. I would ask the Minister if she could explain to me and the people of the Sahtu how this process is outlined so they can see where in the plans the government will build a regional wellness centre something like what other regions have, such as Inuvik, Yellowknife, Fort Smith, Fort Simpson, Hay River. We don’t have one in the Sahtu and we want one. When can we see one?

Beyond the comprehensive long-term plan on capital needs of the NWT that I spoke about and the Foundation for Change Action Plan, which is related, under the new GNWT capital planning process, planning study is required to be completed prior to putting forward a potential capital project for consideration for inclusion in the infrastructure plan. The planning study has to include a needs analysis, operational plan functioning program and schematic design. It’s not just about saying we need this facility here, but really looking at what’s to be delivered there, what other programming and what other services. Once that planning study is submitted by the department to the capital planning review process, then there is a peer review committee that will review the proposal and it will work its way up through the process. This wellness facility idea in Sahtu is at its beginning stage.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Final supplementary, Mr. Yakeleya.

That’s good news for us in the Sahtu. We know it’s in the beginning stage. We know now there’s going to be an end stage. That’s where I want to work with the Minister on this and her Cabinet colleagues in terms of the life of this government; something the Sahtu can expect. I think we want to plug in, in terms of partnerships and through this regional wellness centre, where can we plug in to see that we can one day have a regional wellness centre like other regions I have mentioned. We want to have that right to have our own regional wellness centre. So I ask again to the Minister in terms of her willingness to work with the Sahtu leadership in terms of seeing a regional wellness centre being built in the Sahtu region.

As I’ve stated, I look forward to discussing this further and working on this. I think we should be cautious about the fact that all of this has to work through with a view to the capacity issues and not taking on everything at once. We need to have a continuous dialogue with the leadership of Sahtu and their authority there and move step by step to see that happen in the future.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. The honourable Member for Great Slave, Mr. Abernethy.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m just going to follow up on questions from my colleague for Kam Lake. Between the questions asked by the Member for Kam Lake and the Minister of Health and Social Services, I have to admit that I’m a little confused. My one question to the Minister is: is there a mould problem at Stanton?

Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. The honourable Minister responsible for Health and Social Services, Ms. Lee.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to thank the Member for narrowing the question. It’s not helpful to discuss a multimillion dollar master development plan with a maintenance issue at Stanton. There were three units at the hospital that experienced flooding due to toilets in psychiatry and showers in OBS and they had to do maintenance work as a result of the flooding. Whenever there is flooding in a building like this, the mould is a possibility and the maintenance people discovered that and fixed that. They spent $90,000 to fix that.

The question about whether any units were closed, that was not the case. Four beds had to be moved around while the maintenance people worked to remediate that. In any other house or building when there is some kind of flooding as a result of showers or toilets, it’s a regular practice to fix that and make sure it’s taken care of. That’s what was done at Stanton.

I’d like to thank the Minister for that. That helps put some clarity to my mind. Part of the Minister’s response referred to units. So no units or wards were shut down for maintenance purposes, but were any individual rooms? Did any rooms have to be shut down to do the maintenance on these issues?

Obviously when we have to fix the flooring or the painting or something because of flooding, you have to move beds around. So four beds in the hospital were put out of use. So I don’t know if that’s the bed or if there’s four beds in the room or two beds in the room or four beds in four different rooms, but the beds had to be put out of service, a total of four, but no units were closed as a result of this maintenance work.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. The honourable Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. An issue was raised today by another Member and I’d like to follow up in a different direction. I believe the questions were to the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment regarding the minimum wage adjustments. I had industry contact me and wanted to make sure that some of their concerns were articulated. One of their concerns is if you adjust minimum wage, has the Minister investigated the impact that would have on the potential younger workforce that they would generally hire. The reality is that many of these younger workers would probably be cut and lost if minimum wage is adjusted. Has the Minister investigated that type of perspective in this analysis?

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The honourable Minister responsible for Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Lafferty.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Certainly that is part of the discussion that we want to have with the committee. We’ve compiled all the information from the stakeholders and businesses throughout the North. Certainly that will be part of the discussion that we’d like to have the potential impacts and minor impacts and whatnot. Those are the discussions we’re looking forward to having with the standing committee.

That was a good answer, because, of course, it clearly tells me that nothing has been decided yet without some good and thorough consultation. In one of the ideas, I was thinking about this problem and discussing it with local industry here, small business, and they talked about the impacts this would potentially have on their younger workforce. There was an idea that I had thrown out, saying how reflective would a two-tier minimum wage system work. In other words, if we adjust the present minimum wage right now, it means that a 14-year-old could be paid equally as a 23-year-old who shows up at a first-time job. The reality is, are we paying them comparably with no experience or whatnot. The concept being could a two-tier wage system be considered that, for example, if you’re under 18, your minimum wage is this and if you’re over 18, your minimum wage is another value. Would something like that be considered?