Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There are a couple of issues that the Member raised. The first one about how services were better back in the ‘80s, I do not have information to either accept that or dispute that. I believe, by and large, this government is able to keep records from basically ‘99-2000, because it’s just hard to make comparisons when we’re talking about information prior to division. Anecdotally, I used to work as an executive assistant of the Minister of Health and Social Services for the entire NWT and I think there were as many issues back then as there are now.
On the issue of nursing coverage in Tsiigehtchic, Mr. Chairman, I need to say once again that it is not accurate to say that there is no nurse service in
Tsiigehtchic. I understand that the Member is passionate about seeing a permanent nurse there. I have given him the information about the nurse coverage that the Beaufort-Delta Health and Social Services Authority is providing. For the community of 170 people, last year Tsiigehtchic had 14 weeks between the breakup and freeze-up and another 20 weeks of service I believe. So that’s 34 weeks of service, which is a little over half a year. That is what the authority is able to do within the current regime that we have and the Foundation for Change action plan, and some of the strategic work that we are doing is looking at the entire service delivery model as well as the governance and we will be putting focus on concentrating on small communities and how to better work out a team of care providers that MLA Yakeleya has mentioned earlier. So that is the plan and that is the work that we are trying to do.
However, I need to state, once again, that Tsiigehtchic does have nursing services. We service that community in the way the RCMP services are provided in Tsiigehtchic, which is what the MLA had asked me to do. I had committed to do that last February in the spring and summer sessions last year and I am committed to continue to work on that. Thank you.