Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’d like to welcome the Department of Health and Social Services here today. We’ve got a fairly daunting task before us here in the next day or two. I’m hoping to try to evaluate the current budget here for the Department of Health and Social Services. I did have a chance to read the Minister’s opening remarks again, and obviously, I had a chance to

read one of his statements earlier today on the health and social services system. So I’ll try to amalgamate both here today in kind of a general overview at a high level here.

I think we are in a ripe position to reposition the department where it is today. I want to make sure that the message is loud and clear that just by changing the leadership as we did here a couple of months ago, in my humble opinion, isn’t going to fix all of our problems. It’s just one of the many solutions that we have before us. We are encouraged by some of the recent actions by the Minister and have seen some great strides in a short period of time.

That said, there is definitely still room for improvement and I think the Minister and the department would probably agree with that. I believe the system in itself is doing a relatively good job and I think our territory is recognized to being comparable to across Canada.

We are definitely falling short in some key areas and some of the real disparities still to this day are the levels of care between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal. I think I’d like to hear more about narrowing that gap of disparities as we move forward and for the remainder of the 17th Assembly.

We know that we’ve got the highest rates in Canada for alcohol consumption, binge drinking, smoking and suicide and yet some of the programs we have aren’t really hitting those numbers and bringing them down. We’re seeing some decrease, but quite frankly, we’ve got such a large margin to improve upon that I think we need to take a better look at a larger number of bringing those numbers down.

We have a very high hospital admission rate which is still concerning, given the ratio of population base. I believe our injury rates vis-à-vis the rest of Canada are 10 times higher than the national average. So, we’re dealing with some pretty daunting statistics and we’re facing a lot of challenges in the Northwest Territories in meeting the high quality of health and social services deliveries.

Of course, we have a lot of things that are still plaguing a lot of our areas in our health authorities. We’re still having issues in recruiting the right calibre of professional staff. We still have a lot of technology that’s missing in our communities to allow that emerging technology to reduce wait times, better outcomes and everything else. I know there are lots of variables that are coming to light. The fibre optic line that should be operational in 2016 will definitely be a benefit.

One of the areas that I find the budget is not addressing enough of, and we’ve heard a little bit here today and in the last couple of days, is our aging population. Again, it would be nice to get more of a positioning statement from the

department where the aging population fits in the health care sector.

The Minister has been showing strong leadership and championing a bit of a reform, if you like, in terms of how the overall structure of our health system is currently being handled and ways of improving. It’s enlightening to hear that we’re actually moving and making headway on that. I didn’t capture a lot of that in the opening comments, but I think 2014 will be one of those years of change. I’m looking forward to working with the department, working with the Minister and working with all the stakeholders, including the Joint Leadership Council, with Regular Members and committee to create a more cohesive and stronger health care system delivery.

However, there is still the issue of quality of care. That quality of care, I find, is not the same standard across the Northwest Territories. We have, in many cases in today’s environment, many of the authorities not delivering the programs consistent to the standard of care that many of us take for granted, and I think that’s something that needs to be highly emphasized more than what we’re hearing today. I think there is still a feeling out there that many patients are falling through the cracks, and the follow-up process that we deal with a lot of our patients, once they receive primary care in our hospitals, are finding that they’re not getting that follow-up care in their respective communities on their return home. I think that’s something we still need to look at.

When it comes to tracking our key indicators and how we’re doing as a system, again in referencing even in today’s delivery from the Minister here, we’ve got a number of reports – Health Status Report, physician services utilization report, addictions and substance use report – and a lot of these reports are great. Unfortunately, they’re so sporadic, some of them are five years in length, some of them are three years in length, and we may literally only see one of these reports in the life of this Assembly, which is very hard to try to gauge and create those compass points in terms of how effective some of these changes might be occurring. I know there are costs involved for providing these accounting and key indicators, but without key indicators, without any type of gauge really, how do you evaluate your performance? This is something that I’d like to work with the department, I’d like to work with the Minister to try to see if we could tighten up some of the lapsed time between some of these major reports, maybe looking at a more cohesive look at key indicators and have a bit more of a dashboard, ongoing, real-time dashboard monthly on key issues that affect the Northwest Territories as a whole. These are opportunities, these are barriers that have been overcome in other provinces and in many areas in the United States where they’ve actually been able

to overcome that. I think there’s opportunity here. I’d like to hear it from the department as well.

When it also comes to accountability, I’d have to say although I believe most authorities are doing well when it comes to spending their budgets appropriately, still to this day – and I’m echoing the same words of the Auditor General report – we have contribution agreements in place but we don’t have all performance in place, to my knowledge. If that’s the case, we still have authorities with surpluses and deficits, and sometimes the same authorities that have those in tow, which again should raise alarm bells. If you haven’t spent all your money, have you delivered all the programs? Again, it goes back to my first question, how do you evaluate that in a real time setting, and I think, again, I feel that there is opportunity there. Also, I find that when you do travel from authority to authority, I’m not sure if that standard of care is all there in relationship to possibly what you may get in an urban setting. What I mean by that is that a lot of them will have their own strategic plans, some of their own visions and goals and measured goals and outcomes, and it would be nice to see us, with time, having a standard level of care. Again, going back to my earlier comment, minimizing the gap between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, I believe there is definitely opportunity as we move forward.

I guess last, but not least, and again in no particular order, I think it is very, very important because language really is the conduit of understanding our health care. We still struggle in a lot of our communities in having that service provided in that first language of choice. We hear this not only in health. We’re hearing that in justice. We’re hearing that in other types of services. I don’t want to be oblivious to the fact that I know you’ve got to find translators, there are costs involved, but if we can’t communicate, how do you deliver a service? It’s almost counterintuitive. I think we need to look at language as being the conduit of the transition of care for all communities, even to the smallest ones in the remote areas. I just don’t think it’s quite there yet. I want to hear that. I want to hear the Minister, I want to hear the deputy minister, I want to hear the Department of Health and Social Services shout this out more and more. I’m giving it more emphasis at the end of my opening comments because that’s probably one of the big areas, I think, of opportunity.

I appreciate the committee’s indulgence for allowing me almost a full 10 minutes here, but again, generally we’re seeing some good things here, but there are some huge opportunities as we move forward and looking forward to working with the new Minister for the remaining life of the 17th Assembly.