No, that’s a great idea to check with the authority, because I think a BiliBlanket only costs about $4,000, and then if another infant is born with jaundice and they need to be medevacced to Yellowknife, you just have to do the cost of what it costs for a medevac and everybody to come here to just get the baby wrapped in a blanket when it could be preventative measures and investing in, you know, prevention of these babies that have jaundice and, you know, jaundice is pretty dangerous to a child’s health.

With that said, are there any BiliBlankets or phototherapy in the small communities, in terms of health centres?

For that price, the authority can, if they need a BiliBlanket, proceed with purchasing one. On the other question, we don’t know if there are BiliBlankets in some of the small health centres or not.

Leading on to the next question, does the Minister know the stats of babies that are born with jaundice in the past fiscal year? Can he provide those kinds of stats?

No, I don’t know the stats for the number of babies born with jaundice, but we would be easily able to get that information from the places where the babies are born.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Next I have Mr. Dolynny.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I do have a committee motion.

We’ll distribute the motion.

Please proceed, Mr. Dolynny.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I move that this committee strongly recommends that the funding identified for the territorial midwifery clinical coordinator position be re-profiled and directed towards community program delivery initiatives.

Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. A motion is on the floor. To the motion. Mr. Dolynny.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate the ability to present this motion today to Committee of the Whole. I don’t want to spend a lot of time reviewing a lot of the items that were covered today. There was a lot of passion in this House with respect to midwifery. I do want to say, for the record, that I’ve had a long and promising affair, I guess, with midwifery in a way that most people don’t have. I mean that in the kindest sense. It’s late at night.

---Laughter

I was brought in early on in the infancy stages of the Midwifery Program and was part of the consulting team to put together the legislation for midwifery. I have a very long cardinal relationship with them in terms of understanding their needs and their scope of practice, their ethics and standards that they govern themselves by. They are quite a dynamic group of individuals, and over the years I have been very appreciative, having witnessed going through the process. These people are very, very value-added to our health care system.

It has been talked about in here that we want to look at developing territorial standards in relation to what we already have, and community standards. I think many of us have a hard time grasping that whole concept. We’ve got some very strong community-based programming right now that has done very, very well for us. I think Members here, as general public, really want to see the continuance of the community-based programs. Not to undermine the territorial aspects that the Minister is referring to, just that we do have a good program in place that we need to move quicker along the pathway that was clearly laid out in the March 2012 midwifery report.

The Minister also references the fact that there has been very little consultation. I, again, want to quote this on the fact that the March 2012 report was a compilation of many hours, many stakeholders to which the review and findings were tabled. That was with the collaboration of doctors, communities and stakeholders. To say that there was no consultation, that we’ve got a creative consultation process for a territorial model at this stage, really doesn’t bode well, especially with the fact that this has already been in place for a number of years.

I know the Minister has indicated he doesn’t want to rush into this. We do admire the stewardship of the Minister; however, there is a difference between not rushing into it and taking a snail’s pace to implement it. I believe the Members here are very adamant in our resolve to push this agenda not according to the department staff wants and wishes but to the wishes and needs of the community and the Northwest Territories. We’re hoping the department will understand and heed the wishes of

committee and also heed the wishes of the Northwest Territories.

I could go at great lengths to support the re-profiling of this money but we’ve heard many of these arguments this evening already, so I will refrain from continuing with the same. With that, I am hoping we will get support for this motion.

Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. To the motion.

Question has been called.

---Carried

Page 8-23, Health and Social Services, activity summary, health services programs, operations expenditure summary, $198.582 million.

Page 8-24, Health and Social Services, activity summary, health services programs, grants and contributions, grants, $40,000, contributions, $152.528 million, total grants and contributions, $152.568 million. Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I wanted to ask the Minister when his department will begin bringing forward plans to staff health centres or nursing stations that are without nurses in communities. How many communities does the Northwest Territories have without nurses at their health centres?

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Mr. Beaulieu.

Thank you, Madam Chair. This will be part of our clinical services plan which we earlier talked about having completed the review of the Integrated Service Delivery Model. We expect to have a plan by August 2013.

I look forward to the plan the Minister is working on and how we move this plan forward. How many communities are without a nurse stationed at their health centres?

We have eight communities that don’t have nursing services at this time.

So I look forward to this Minister moving with his other colleagues and looking at where these dollars are going to be spent for the upcoming years. We have eight communities. I hope the Minister can forward me a list later on as to which communities do not have health nurses actually in the community, so that we can look at some proper staffing of these communities with some of these basic essential needs such as the health nurses in our communities. In the same line I

will be asking questions to the Minister of Justice on communities that do not have RCMP, what type of plans are in place to work towards filling these communities with some of these basic necessities that we expect today.

Long gone are the days when it was okay, but now with today’s standards it is not okay at this time in the year 2013. I just want to reiterate that the Minister is going to come sometime in August 2013 and I’m looking forward to some concrete plans where these eight communities would start to see nurses in their communities and not to be serviced by other communities on a one week per month date. I just wanted to let the Minister know I’m going to be looking forward to that and put him on notice that I will be doing some work for him.