Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. Mr. Beaulieu.

Thank you, Madam Chair. We are just going to locate that information and then we will have the… Okay. Perhaps I could get the deputy minister to provide some detail on the expenditure.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Ms. DeLancey.

Thank you, Ms. DeLancey. Mr. Dolynny.

Great, thank you. I appreciate the deputy minister’s thorough reply there. It’s good to hear that we’re definitely moving along in this area. So the numbers I did receive, I believe my math is okay, $10.3 million that we’ve spent this far; $4.1 million was federal money. We see in the budget, and again I do appreciate leniency, we’re talking about something further on in our activity summary at $489,000. Does the department have a number in mind as to what the annual cost or estimated costs are going to be at the end of the four-year so-called rollout? So something that we can maybe anticipate on a yearly costing for the maintenance and the continuance of electronic medical records. Thank you.

No further questions. But I do appreciate the thoroughness of the reply and I appreciate the numbers being shared today. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. Next on my list is Mr. Bouchard.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate the department’s answers to all these questions and I appreciate the Minister’s responses as well. I guess this is the beginning of the process that, when coming into this job, I thought I might find it frustrating being in private business where we implement stuff a little quicker than the government, and this is one area that I think is lacking with our government system, and it’s in the area of midwifery.

The Minister has asked why we’re so concerned about trying to implement things quickly and trying to move things ahead. It’s basically because I think most Members here and the general public are concerned and frustrated with the system the way things are set up. Midwifery is already set up in Fort Smith. In Yellowknife they stopped the process, did a study, which took them a long time to do, re-established it in Fort Smith and that study indicated this is what we should suggest for implementation. Now we’re given that we need to create a bureaucracy where we have a coordinator the first year, then the second year we go into Hay River, the third year we go into Inuvik and Behchoko, then the fourth year we’ll go into other communities like

Yellowknife and Norman Wells and other potential sites. So I think the area of timelines is the fact that we’re seeing a project, something that’s been assessed, something that we did a study on, and now we’re looking at implementing it over four years. Why can’t we do a coordinator and implement Hay River in the same year, if that’s the wish of the department or if that’s the way it’s going to go forward? Why can’t we multi-task in this system?

So, as I indicated, I respect the department’s hard work, but I think we should be implementing this quicker. This is what people want. The Minister has asked why we want this so quickly. I’ve been in this House, I’ve shown people sitting in this Legislative Assembly, friends of mine waiting to have a baby in Yellowknife. We want to have babies in our communities and the Minister knows that. These are people that are, you know, the one person it was her third child. She’s got a husband waiting in Yellowknife, she’s got kids waiting in Hay River and she’s got family in Hay River waiting to have a child. That’s why we’re looking to implement this.

So we are frustrated with the system and I’m glad to hear that Fort Smith is doing well, and I know the percentages go up when you have a full-time position and I know the department is working on that stuff. The timeline is also due to the fact that we know once we say, okay, we’re going to implement this in Hay River, it’s going to take just about a year to implement it. So if we’re going to wait a year to do it in Hay River, that means you’re two and a half years from now from actually having a midwife in place and operational. I know that our authority is interested in putting in a new facility, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t have somebody lined up, the hiring process, the review process of that person, the implementation in the authority needs to be in place, as well, for that new facility, and no different in Inuvik or Behchoko.

So the timelines just get extended and extended. Now we’ve got to do more studies, we’ve got to do more implementation, we’ve got to study it some more. That just drags it out. So this four years for Yellowknife to be implemented in the fourth year may take five years. Like, is that reasonable for people, where the program was already in place, to expect them to see that?

I’m just really frustrated with the government system and the fact that we’re implementing something that is operational in Fort Smith. It’s something that was operational before. We have done a study. Now we allow it. It just frustrates me to no end that we’re doing this.

The other area that people are concerned with, and we’re no different, Mr. Yakeleya talked about the short time and attention span of the government. This Legislative Assembly is interested in midwifery, but the next one to two and a half years

may not have an interest in it. It may fall off the map. He’s had issues where it was a hot button item, and then the next Assembly it gets dropped and it’s not being implemented anymore. That’s why people are interested in it being implemented now, not as opposed to later. I think we’re very interested in seeing some of these things implemented right away.

Like I talked about the hiring, we know, through physicians, that it takes a while to hire physicians. Your midwives are the same way, training. But let’s get this process going now as opposed to hiring a coordinator the one year, having that person do, a manager or coordinator doing something when there’s no staff there and no midwives to coordinate. So what’s the coordinator doing? Let’s implement them at the same time, if that’s the wish of the department to have a coordinator. I question whether we need a coordinator or not. I’m just saying, if the department wants to do that, let’s do it the same year.

The other issue that is frustrating with me is the department talks about midwifery implemented in Hay River will be regional. We’re going to use the other parts of the communities. That’s fine, that’s a great concept, but Hay River is funded not as a regional hospital. It’s a community health centre. We’re not only funded that way operational-wise, but we’re funded that way capital-wise. When they’re building this new facility, it’s not a regional hospital; it’s a community centre. Now the department is talking about bringing things into the regional. Now we in Hay River are being asked to do more capacity with less infrastructure money and less operational money.

If the department wants to do this, I want to make sure the department knows that Hay River wants to be funded for this. If the dollars we’re getting now are going to be the same dollars we get when we have to do a regional implementation of midwifery, that’s more burdensome on our system and it impacts the community of Hay River.

I’m very frustrated with the system. I don’t really know if I have any questions for the Minister other than a statement of frustration with the way this thing is being implemented.

Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. Perhaps your question is why are you frustrated. Order please, Members. Minister Beaulieu.

Madam Chair, although we feel at the department that there’s some risk to manage in monitoring and auditing what we’re doing, we need to provide comfort with the physicians that are going to work within the system. There seems to be a groundswell of support to go into the midwives. If we just added the midwives this coming fiscal year in Hay River, it would cost us additional money. If we were to move money within

our midwives plan, move money around, we could move to hiring midwives. But to clearly understand here that we could run into some serious issues with managing risk, we need to have a process, a quick… We will try to speed up the process. We need to have a process where we are dealing with the physicians.

At the end of the day, many of the people that go to midwives choose to have their babies with a doctor. If we are moving into it without this proper consultation with doctors and we are moving into another midwife program or another midwife delivery, then we are going to have to fast-track this process or consultation with doctors, discuss the management of risk with doctors. We will essentially have to drop some of the monitoring auditing of what we are doing, and we have to do a consultation with the Hay River Health and Social Services Authority.

Because there is no board, we will talk to the public administrator and the CEO in Hay River to do this. This will require us to then do some shuffling within the entire midwife budget as we plan to roll it out. It essentially could mean that we will drop what we think is a very, very essential piece of developing this whole thing that is a midwife coordinator at the department level. We want to move through this system to make sure that the midwives and the system are able to stand up to any scrutiny and would be able to also be something that has long-term success.

I recognize that people from Hay River are having their babies in Yellowknife. That has been going on for quite some time. We are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel here in trying to set up a system that is going to bring midwives in what we consider to be a reasonable, coordinated fashion. MLAs are saying that they want us to put midwives in Hay River now. So we will go back and start our consultation process with the health authority, health and social services authority, Hay River and Stanton. They will be involved. Stanton is going to be the people that don’t want to, and that is proven. Fifty percent of the people in Fort Smith still choose to have their babies at Stanton. There is communication between the midwives in Fort Smith and Stanton. Stanton is a territorial hospital. If the people are not comfortable going from the prenatal stage right through birth with midwives only in the room, then those people have to be moved to Yellowknife because we don’t have physicians in Hay River at this time.

As much as I sat here for the past several months trying to explain that we need to move this through in an orderly fashion, it appears as though the MLAs are going to push until we actually put midwives in Hay River. So we’re prepared to warn, I guess, the MLAs that there could be some risk involved here, but at the same time maybe move

some funding around to provide some midwives. I couldn’t really say midwife service in Hay River, but midwives in Hay River. I guess if several months ahead of schedule, if that is what the MLAs want to do… We don’t really know how they’re going to engage into the system at this time. But if that’s what the MLAs want within our current budget, we will look at that.

Thank you, Minister. Mr. Bouchard, your time has expired. I’ll put you back on the list, if you need to be. Next on the list is Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to come back to something that I was thinking about when I asked questions about the health and social services authorities’ administration money. I think it was mentioned that $1.4 million, I assume we are still talking about the same pot of money of $15.5 million but $1.4 million is allocated to staffing, sort of, compensation and benefits. If that’s the case, why wouldn’t this be further labeled or better labelled as a travel fund, and maybe if they could talk specifically around who accesses this funding.

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Minister Beaulieu.

This is for staff of the Department of Health and Social Services, not the authorities. This is for staff that are in Inuvik.

Is the Minister saying that just, you know, making numbers easy, $14 million is used for travel by the staff in Inuvik?

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Are we talking about the same numbers, perhaps? Minister Beaulieu.

I apologize. I thought that the Member had indicated that he was talking about the health services administration again, as he did in the first question. This is a question on the health and social services authority administration. I will have the director of finance provide a response.

Thank you, Minister. Ms. Mathison, please.

Thank you, Ms. Mathison. Mr. Hawkins.

Okay. Then earlier I had asked a question to expand on what it actually represented, and I think I understood it was, unless we were talking about two different areas, I got a $1.4 million

figure and then the rest was travel and some of it was office supplies. Are we talking about all the same thing or are we talking about two different items here? I just want to first make sure we’re talking about the same item, and I’m speaking to health and social services authority administration, and then, of course, if you read the detail, it includes the funding for HSS authorities for activities associated with management and administration. Let’s make sure first, I guess, we’re talking about the same one and how did we have $1.4 million in compensation before and now we’re not.

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Minister Beaulieu.