Thank you, Mr. Chair. My comments are in no particular order and I would like to thank the Minister and his staff for being here.

The department, in my mind, has a huge responsibility. They’ve got a huge section of our total territorial budget. By and large, I think the department is doing a pretty good job. Certainly there are wishes from Members for the department to do more but, you know, when push comes to shove, we kind of all would like to have more.

That said, there are some priorities which I feel are priorities to me and also to some other Members on this side of the House that aren’t getting the attention I think they should, and by attention I mean financial attention. I know the staff are working very hard to do what they can, but you can only go so far with what money you have.

So, some of these are reflective of my priorities. Some of them are just general comments on the department, as a whole.

I know the department is working towards a change in the governance and our system of authorities. I think it’s something which is overdue and I commend the Minister and the department for taking what I see as action at this point. It has been talked about for quite a long time and I’m glad to see that I think we’re going to be moving forward in the near future on making some concrete changes. We have been making changes in terms of sort of operational activities, but we need to talk about how we are governing our health system. We’ve been talking about it, but we need to actually make some changes to our system and I think we’ll find efficiencies if we do that both in terms of PYs, but also in terms of actual dollars.

The Minister has said a number of times to Members in committee and outside of committee that early childhood development is a high priority for the department. I’m hugely supportive of that and I think the early development instrument results, although they were preliminary results, but we’ve had those in the last couple of months and those are very indicative of the attention that we need to pay to our zero to three-year-olds. It’s my belief that we should be putting more money than what’s in the budget into child and family resource centres. If not centres, because we’ve had two and I don’t know if we’ve had a chance to evaluate them, but certainly on paper they look to me like they’re the best way to go, but if we’re not going to be putting money into that particular program or activity, then we need to put it into another activity. I

just don’t think that this budget reflects as much emphasis and as much spending on our zero to three and zero to four-year-olds as it should.

The Minister tabled an updated Mental Health and Addictions Action Plan just within the last week or so I think. I’m glad to see that there has been some recognition of some of the activities that have taken place and some of the other plans that have been put in place in that there’s a change to the Mental Health and Addictions Plan which came out last year sometime. I would hope that all the plans that the government is dealing with not just within Health but that all departments would do the same thing, that an action plan doesn’t come out and then sit there stagnant for five years. They should be a living document, much like a strategic plan.

I note in the Minister’s opening remarks that $3.2 million will address a base deficiency in Stanton’s medical travel budget. This has been an issue for many years and I would just like confirmation from the Minister that this is an ongoing $3 million that is going to be addressing the deficiency in the medical travel budget, but at the same time, I thought I had heard noises that medical travel and the costs for medical travel was going to be moved to the department. So, I’m a little confused if this $3 million is being added to Stanton’s budget or if medical travel is going to be at the department level.

Right after that the Minister said $5.2 million has been added to the budget to address increased costs for residential placements outside of the NWT, and that again has been a cost which we have been funding by supplementary appropriations, certainly as long as I’ve been here, and I would like confirmation that this has been added to the base and that we will be better budgeting for the costs for our residential placements outside of the NWT in the future. That’s what it sounds like, but I’m just not sure of it.

The other thing with medical travel and somebody mentioned that we’re reviewing the policy and absolutely we need to review the policy. I think the Minister mentioned the Med-Response, and the Med-Response system, I think, is going to assist in some efficiencies with medical travel. I certainly hope so. I’d appreciate confirmation on that. I’d also like to know when the Med-Response system is going to take effect. I don’t believe the Minister mentioned when Med-Response is going to take flight.

The Midwifery Program, I’m very glad to see that there’s money in the budget for this program. I am disappointed, however, that during last year’s budget deliberations there was money added to the budget for midwifery to advance the Midwifery Program and that didn’t happen. I presume that that money lapsed. Members on this side of the House felt that we wanted to get midwifery in Hay River

sooner than what the department was planning. We also wanted to get it started in Inuvik sooner than what the department was planning. So I was really disappointed that that didn’t happen. I presume it was a capacity issue with the department, but I would hope and I’m not sure exactly when we’re expecting to have a midwife or a Midwifery Program in action in Inuvik, but I’d appreciate confirmation of when.

The Minister has advised us that the department is working on assessing our long-term care needs and I have a particular interest because of the long-term care facility which exists here in my community in Yellowknife. The Aven Centre is looking at an expansion and I know the Minister has said that the capacity at Avens will be considered in conjunction with the long-term care needs right across the territory. So there is a report coming, I understand. It’s been coming for quite some time. I’d appreciate knowing from the Minister when we can expect that report. As has been mentioned by a couple of Members already, seniors are an ever growing part of our population and I think as is pointed out in the Aven’s proposal, which the Minister has seen, the need for long-term care beds for seniors and for care for seniors, whether it’s acute care or not, it’s huge.

The need for enhanced and identified services, and generally mental health services related to wellness courts, the needs for services for wellness courts I don’t think has been totally identified by the department. I know that the recognition is there that we need to have those services in order for wellness courts to go ahead, but I think the department should be putting more emphasis on making sure those services are in place so the wellness courts can basically get going. We’ve been talking about this, again, for a very long time.

There’s no mention in the Minister’s opening remarks about the child and family service committees. I know that’s been a really difficult program to get going, I would just be interested in knowing whether or not that program has been kind of put off to one side because it has been so difficult.

The Anti-Poverty Strategy was mentioned and I am very supportive of the work that the Minister has done on the Anti-Poverty Strategy. He has involved people outside of government, he’s involved many aspects of our community outside of government and it’s proven to have produced us a pretty good document, and they’re working on the action plan right now. I think my biggest concern with the Anti-Poverty Strategy is that I don’t know that that strategy and the action plan that’s being developed is going to look at the difficulties and the impediments that policies across government create for people who are in poverty and/or particularly assessing income assistance and other

programs. In my mind, in order for us to actually have the Anti-Poverty Strategy work, we have to make sure that we don’t have policies that are working at cross-purposes to each other. We’ve talked about this before, but I’m not so sure that the government has taken it on as an issue that is extremely important.

Lastly, I want to make a comment about deficits for a couple of our health authorities, particularly the Beau-Del and Stanton. I guess there’s been, again, a lot of talk about sort of how to fix it and if we are going to fix it. So I would appreciate knowing from the Minister at some point what his plans are to try and make sure that we fund authorities appropriately so that they’re not in deficit because, in general, I think they’re in deficit because we aren’t funding them properly.

I have the same concern about my own local Yellowknife Health and Social Services Authority. Their deficit is not nearly as large as Stanton, for instance, but they’re still operating in a deficit and the Minister needs to do something to look at all of our authorities, and maybe the governance will change things, but we have to look at all our authorities and make sure we fund them properly so they aren’t operating in a deficit.

I see my time now is up so I am now done. Thank you, Mr. Chair.