Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Madam Chair. The work on the childhood family services committees is continuing. The work on the midwifery review will be concluded. I believe the third item, which I didn’t get a chance to make a note of, is also going to continue to be dealt with.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. It was the mental health review, I believe. Did you wish to comment on that? I believe the last one was a mental health review. Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Madam Chair. That work is continuing as well, I believe.

I guess I’d like to know a little more specifically than that. There was actually four. I will mention them again. There’s the child and family services community committees; we’ve committed to getting five of those up and running this fiscal year. I’m assuming that’s going to happen and that we will continue that work. Obviously, we want one in every community. What is the goal for the first quarter that we’re confirming a budget for here with the child and family services committee?

The second one is the early childhood development review that’s being done and I believe should be completed – maybe I could get this confirmed – this fiscal year. Actually, why don’t we hang onto that

one? That may be done by ECE, I believe, rather than Health. Let’s hang onto that one. I’ll remove that question and stick with the midwifery and the mental health reorganization. It wasn’t exactly a review but a mental health reorganization. I want to be sure that those are not only going to be completed but enabled to continue with their development, presumably with the funds being spent on those reviews in the current fiscal year. I want to know that’s happening in the new fiscal year and what the status of those are.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Mr. Miltenberger has deferred to the Minister of Health and Social Services. Mr. Beaulieu.

Thank you, Madam Chair. On the child and family services review, one of the main recommendations was the child and family services committees in the communities across the territory. We have advised the Beaufort-Delta along with all of the health and social services authorities, starting with the Beaufort-Delta right down to the Fort Smith Health and Social Services Authority, that we are going to start the training component, that they will work on a training component with the communities to start developing those committees in the communities. We’ve had, in addition to that, some discussions at the community level. I’m doing the tour with the department to all of the communities, and about maybe last month, closer to the end of the month we finished a Sahtu tour and reviewed that at the community levels. It looks like it would be feasible for us to do at least three child and family services committees in the Sahtu.

Right now we’re compiling the numbers to see where we think these types of committees would lend a great amount of support to the department when it comes to dealing with child protection. We basically reviewed the children who are receiving services from the department. I have the numbers of the latest tour because I was briefed on it. In the Sahtu we have a couple of communities, one where no children are receiving services from the department and one where one child is receiving services. In the other three communities there’s quite a few. So we were going to look at trying to target the communities that had the greatest numbers of children taking services from the health and social services authorities and we intend to do the same thing right across the board wherever we think that it would be wise to put these committees together, not just to put the committees in where we thought that they should go. I think the initial intent was to put one in every community but we find some communities may not need it.

In the midwifery we are doing a review of the midwife and we’re calling it, I guess, an NWT midwifery review. That review is of the two midwives that are currently in Fort Smith and the

one midwife position that’s in Yellowknife. We think that’s going to save the government money. In Fort Smith, as an example, with the two midwives there were 24 births in Fort Smith under the supervision of the midwives and 26 more births that occurred outside of Fort Smith but were taken right to the stage and for medical reasons or the choice of the mother were sent to doctor’s care for the actual birth. We see that program also will be saving money if the midwives were able to deliver babies at the community level.

I don’t have the information here on the mental health review. I can get that information, I’m sure, fairly quickly and I can brief the Member on that.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Just a quick follow-up and then I’ll give somebody else a turn and return to my questions about ECE programs in a similar vein.

I appreciate this information. A very positive word from the Sahtu. That’s excellent news. Now what I’d like to do is know that this program is going to continue and an additional target has been developed for the first quarter of 2012-2013 to establish new child and family services committees.

Similarly with the Midwifery Program that we now know that it does save us money. Not a surprise to many, I’m sure, but good to have it confirmed. It sounds like good work there. That review was with respect to NWT-wide midwifery services and what our approach will be. What work is being proposed for the first quarter to begin to, first of all, obviously re-establish the Yellowknife program in desperate need there and to expand it for the NWT? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Mr. Miltenberger.

Madam Chair, the purpose of the interim appropriation was to give the government enough money to run so that we can go through the business planning process in the intervening months following this session to get us to the May/June budget session to have time for the committees to review all the business plans of all the departments. The debate and discussion about what should be in the business plans, what should be in the budget going forward, that’s a discussion we have to have. We’ve taken, as I indicated in my opening comments, basically a third of the budget and we’re putting it to use. There’s work underway.

The other discussion about what’s going to fall out of programs after that point is a discussion that we have to have tied to the business planning process and we’re not in the position to have that discussion here because we haven’t concluded this piece; we haven’t really kicked off fully with targets and

directions to departments to get ready for the business planning process. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Madam Chair. My comments are mostly on Health and Social Services and I have a comment to Education, Culture and Employment. Madam Chair, maybe I’ll go a couple of concerns and comments and, like Mr. Bromley, if I do run out of time I’ll come back to conclude. I do thank the Members for providing this unanimous consent to go back to general comments on this bill here.

I want to ask a question with health on the policy for people in my communities to go to see traditional healers and what type of support is given to some of my people who want to see the Aboriginal traditional healers within the health. That’s the first one.

The second one, in the interim appropriation bill, the Sahtu people are concerned that sometimes when people have blood tests that the blood doesn’t get out in time. For example, some flights are cancelled due to bad weather and then some people need to be retested again, and sometimes the results will come back to them. One of the things they looked at through this process here would be if it’s possible to have a regional blood lab in the Sahtu, perhaps with the design of a new wellness centre in the Sahtu being built, supposed to be built in Norman Wells.

The Minister went to Fort Good Hope and heard the concerns of the people in Fort Good Hope, specifically around cancer. I ask if the department would consider implementing an early cancer screening project in all of the Sahtu.

The Minister also visited Colville Lake. In Colville Lake they we’re looking at having some support there for an X-ray machine. They looked at if the department would consider a portable X-ray machine for that health centre.

My other concern has been about the availability for interpreters for the Sahtu people who have to travel to Inuvik. Sometimes it’s very difficult to get Sahtu speakers to help patients. They may bring a medical escort who speaks their language, but sometimes they don’t always understand the medical terminology. We’ve been told that it’s very difficult, sometimes the doctor speaks really fast, they don’t have the proper training or they don’t know how to say it. I think this is one of the big issues and challenges across the North with the shortage of interpreters trained in a specialized area such as medical or legal terms. We asked if the Minister would look at this situation, maybe with the support of the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment.

Madam Chair, the people in the Sahtu who travel with people on medical travel, sometimes our people are gone for six weeks, three weeks, two weeks and there’s really no compensation for these people leaving their communities. They may be leaving a part-time job, they may be leaving work and there’s no compensation for them to stay for longer periods or long periods at the hospital. I had an experience of a person who stayed with the patient for six weeks. Thank God the community band council provided some money for that person. Now they’re asking if there’s any type of medical compensation for escorts who are away for longer periods; for example, after a week or two weeks.

My two more questions on health have to deal with the Nurse Practitioner Program. The Minister has initiated some of the strategy on how to recruit doctors in our communities. We are seeing locum doctors in the Sahtu and in other communities around the North and it’s been very financially challenging for the department, for the territorial government, but more so for the people in our health centres. I understand there are going to be some graduates from the Nurse Practitioner Program. Where do we put them? You know, put them here in Yellowknife, put them in our regions. We need to take advantage of their expertise and their hard work, and we need to see the nurse practitioners more into our regions and our health centres. They need to go to a place where they have trained all those years. We need to see more health practitioners into our communities and our health centres.

My last point in health is that in a lot of our communities there are relatives who are looking after our elders, helping them with things like getting around, chores, assisting them with taking their medications. That’s very good because that’s part of our culture, that’s part of our beliefs, to look after our elders. However, we heard that some of the elders are not being taken care of because of policy within government that says if you have somebody that lives with you or who is working, you’d be penalized and you would be cut off from some form of subsidy. That puts a lot of fear into the elders. We also heard that some of the relatives that look after their own people, for example, a woman looking after her uncle, or looking after their grandfather, or a man looking after his mother or auntie, you come into some issues of taboos where a lot of people are not very comfortable helping them with their personal cleanliness and hygiene. They don’t like that and so they are asking how can the Minister help them in situations where you can have somebody in the community come in and work with or help work with the elders in those areas.

Further to my comments to the Health department I have one small one on Education, Culture and Employment. I understand that there is a health

curriculum for K to 9 in schools but there is nothing for the high school students. I don’t know if this is true or not, but I am going to ask the Minister if he could confirm this, and if not, would we have the Minister commit to having his department work with Health and Social Services to develop a health curriculum for Grades 10 to 12. Madam Chair, these are my comments here. I will leave it at that. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Those were your general comments. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Madam Chair. The Member has raised a number of pertinent issues, pertinent for the review of the budget. The main budget is the development of the business plans. No Minister is ready or available to respond to requests or increase the programs or addition of positions, new capital items. The intent here today was to give us the bare amount of money we need as a government to operate for three months so that we can in fact have that fulsome discussion about the budget through the committee process, and not be in a position here where individual Members are asking for commitments on all sorts of program development before we have had an opportunity to in fact pull together a business plan and have that fulsome discussion through the committee process so that we come into the House with the main estimates in May/June.

In regards to the question of clarification to the Minister of Education, for example, there is a request to add on a service that doesn’t already exist. Madam Chair, we are not in a position to give the Members answers other than we will look at it through the budgeting process and the business plan development in the coming weeks where we will all be fully engaged. Thank you.

Thank you. Next on the list of general comments I have Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I think this is an extremely important topic here. The Minister says we are not able to discuss what will happen with these critical, important programs that this House has approved as priorities and put in place in this first quarter of the next fiscal year, and yet we are approving 33 percent or, actually, more of the budget, or well over a quarter of the budget, about a third for those three months.

In this budget that we are approving, it is simply a mirror of last year’s, and during last year’s budget those dollars were intended to serve the priorities and programs we had identified without knowing that work continues on and the next steps are taken with this $400-plus million worth we are proposing here based on last year’s budget. We are giving the government authorization, permission to spend the

dollars as they want. That is not right. Basically we have identified these priorities and we want to know that they are continuing to be served until such time as we establish new priorities. On that basis, I think it is quite correct to be asking and expecting commitment of ongoing work on these critically important programs, especially reviews and so on that are proposing new directions. I want to know that the government is committed to continuing these priorities until we have established new ones.

The dollars are there. They were spent in the past on these priorities and we are duplicating those dollars now, and to say that we can’t discuss how they are spent or anything like that and receive assurance they are continuing to be focused on those priorities and programs, that does not give me confidence at all. I want to know that that is the case. Before I go on with specifics, I welcome a response from the Minister on that. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Mr. Minister.

Madam Chair, clearly the government was part of the discussion in the Cabinet, the agreement for interim appropriation, the understanding being is we continue to fund the government to do the work it is doing until it gets us to the point for this new Assembly to build and put their fingerprints on the business planning process for this coming year. Our commitment is that we are continuing that program. It is a status quo budget. The work that is underway is still underway. This is not a blank cheque for Ministers or the Cabinet to make any changes. Our job is to keep the ship of state pointed the way it is pointed until we have the business planning process so we can collectively determine what adjustments, if any, will be made. Work that is underway will continue to be underway, and we can provide updates, absolutely, on all of the things that are currently underway. But when it is accompanied by requests for increases, new positions, program additions, capital, those are all things that either have been dealt with through the capital plan already or the program discussion and implications of all these other requests have yet to be had.

I will reassure the Member that we are very aware and committed to our obligation in this process. Anything that is ongoing, we can speak to, yes, with absolute openness, but any new requests, we are not in a position to give any response to other than it will be discussed through the business planning process. Thank you.

Madam Chair, I think the Minister had some good comments there. I guess what I would like to know is the child and family services committees, as an example, we provided funding for those to be established. Since we are duplicating our budget, those dollars will be

duplicated in the next fiscal year during the first quarter until such time as we establish new priorities for the last three quarters of the fiscal year. I think it is quite legitimate for us to know, or committee to know, what the goal is for the number of new committees to be established with those dollars. If not, what is the unannounced intention for those dollars? I just used that as an example.

I am looking at the student financial assistance review. We are spending dollars on that and those dollars are continuing. The early childhood development, one of the biggest priorities of this government, in my mind, is continuing. We have spent money on the midwifery review and we found out it is a worthwhile program. Those dollars are continuing at least through the first quarter of the next fiscal year. Mental health reorganization and so on, so that is the basis of my questions. What are the plans or goals for those programs during the first quarter? If the Minister is not prepared to discuss that, can we expect that that will be forthcoming during this session in committee? Otherwise it is a rubber-stamping, go forward, spin it how you want kind of approval, in my mind.

Madam Chair, the child and family services committees, there was a commitment made that is being honoured. The work is being done identifying up to five. That was the ongoing commitment going from the last Assembly. Student financial assistance, there is work being done. There is an existing policy in place that will be applied as it now exists until such a time as it is decided by this Legislature that there is going to be a change, to use two examples.

This appropriation is the money to allow the government to carry on programs and business that now exist. It is not a rubber-stamp or a blank cheque for the government to just unilaterally wipe the slate clean and make all sorts of arbitrary changes. That is not the intent.

When we had this discussion we agreed to this process. It was because the new Legislature wanted that opportunity to have a full discussion on business plans, and we are fully committed to doing that. So the Member is interpreting the fact that we don’t have all the business plans detailed and ready to go and that we’re honest, that his whole approach is that we’re not willing or forthcoming. That fact is we haven’t had any committee input, we are developing the business plans and we fully intend to have that discussion. In the meantime we all agree that government has to keep working, because it’s going to take us three months to do that. We will continue to run government as it now exists. There are no additions, deletions, changes and we have no other ulterior motive other than that. Thank you.

I prefer to take the Minister’s word at face value there. I mean, I don’t say that

this is a mechanism to gain control over the money, but in fact in practical reality that’s what it is if we don’t have some evidence that the work is continuing on these programs. I’m not talking about normal services; I realize that that’s the vast majority of our budget and those will be continuing as the Minister said, but we established a number of reviews and really some new looks and new directions in the last government, and I’m looking for assurance that those will continue to be developed with the dollars that are available as per our duplication of the budget.

For example, major programs like early childhood development, midwifery, mental health reorganization and so on, student financial assistance, community committees. I don’t think it’s asking too much to get assurance that those goals will be continued with this $400-plus million, an amazing amount of money that we’re being asked to approve here. Thank you.

I think the Member and I are reaching the point of agreement. Let me commit again that the work that’s been agreed to that’s underway will continue until it is changed by the discussion or a decision in this Legislature through the business planning process. The work on the family and children’s services committees was committed to and is underway for the five committees. The student financial assistance work is underway and will be brought back into this Legislature through the proper processes, as will all the other work, the mental health work. All that work is still underway, waiting and pending the committee’s review and the feedback of the Legislature. We can agree and bring in the main estimates that reflect the outcome of all that other work through the business planning process. Thank you.

Thank you. General comments. I have Ms. Bisaro.