I call the House back to order. Before I call for the report of Committee of the Whole, I am informed you would like some more time to consider the matters before you in Committee of the Whole.

By the authority given to me by Motion 10-17(5), I hereby place you back into Committee of the Whole to consider the business before the House until such time as you are ready to report, with Mr. Dolynny in the chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Very briefly, I support this motion. I’d also like to note that it’s not really just prevention we’re talking about. We have a situation now, so we obviously need a lot of on-the-ground action right now while we are conducting or planning and putting in place a good comprehensive program of both prevention and treatment.

I’d also like to mention that we really should be promoting a dental therapist training program at Aurora College, so I’m hoping that the Minister of ECE is listening and will start to give some serious attention to developing that program, as well, if indeed we don’t have it yet.

I will be supporting the motion. Mahsi.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. To the motion. Mr. Moses.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Committee did some hard work going through the business planning session and I feel that bringing motions forward for recommendations that, as chair of the standing committee, I do stand behind the hard work of the committee members, the staff, and the departments that came and presented before us and gave us some of their concerns and issues as well.

As this is a recommendation, I will be supporting the motion. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Moses. To the motion. Minister Abernethy.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just for some clarity, there is a reference to this, in this motion, to $468,000 which I believe is the $468,000 that was identified in 8-39. Just for clarity purpose, the dollars that are there came from the federal government, and not the entire $468,000 were actually NWT dollars.

We had, out of that $498,000, when you combine the $468,000 and the $30,000 the year before, we had $198,000 of that and then $50,000 of that available to the Northwest Territories. Of that amount, $144,000 had to go to Nunavut and $105,000 had to go to the Yukon. One of the reasons the federal government gave these dollars to us is for the exact reasons that the Member is talking about, in addition to the fact that we know in Canada we have lost the one training institution that does train dental therapists and the federal government wanted the three territories to try to come up with some solutions on how to improve oral health in the Northwest Territories and also to start having some discussions on how we can facilitate some training for them.

The dollars are used and are being used as part of the Pan-Territorial Oral Health Initiative which has been going on for the two years, and from that they’re going to come up with a report that’s going to help inform decision-making as we go forward on how to improve dental therapy services but also just oral health services in the Northwest Territories as well as the other two territories.

We already do a number of things. We have $366,000 dedicated to dental therapy positions in the Northwest Territories, who are an incredibly important position who do treatment as well as public health and oral health for prevention and promotion. We do a number of things on top of that.

Dental and oral health is promoted at regional and community levels through the authorities, and programs such as Lift the Lip and Little Teeth are big campaigns that focus on teaching parents the

importance of good oral care for children zero to five, or Healthy Family programs have oral health and promotion sections, dental therapists are doing incredible work out there, community health representatives and wellness workers are involved in dental oral health prevention, regional nutritionists are doing much of this work as well. Campaigns linked to healthy eating such as Drop the Pop, promotional breastfeeding and early childhood programs are also contributing in this area. Does that mean we’re doing enough? No. We need to do more and we’ve heard that clearly.

But part of the problem with this motion that’s in front of us today is it seems to be suggesting that this $468,000 is something we should duplicate when, in fact, these dollars were not for the provision of these services but was to do an analysis and research, which concludes at the end of this fiscal year.

It is referenced in here that we should use these federal dollars that are coming as part of the $7 million. But as I indicated yesterday, the federal government put really tight limitations on how we can spend those dollars, and at this time we don’t know what those criteria are, but we do know that the three territories did put forward a recommendation for more money, of which we did not get the full funding, for health system improvement, access to specialized tertiary care and pan-territorial innovation. We don’t know that this will fit under there, so this motion might be a little on the premature side.

What we can say is, when we know what these dollars are available for, we will certainly have discussion with committee to help set our priorities. But at this time, to suggest we put $468,000 in, recognizing these tight fiscal times, also recognizing that we are doing things and that we want to do things better and we will work with the three territories to ensure that dental therapists have training available to northern residents, we are going to be voting against this motion at this time.

Thank you, Minister Abernethy. To the motion.

Question has been called. The motion is defeated.

---Defeated

Committee, we are on 8-17, activity summary. Sorry, before we do so, Minister Abernethy, do you have witnesses that you’d like to bring into the House?

Yes, please.

Thank you, Minister Abernethy. Sergeant-at-Arms, if you would escort the witnesses into the House, please.

I would like to welcome Ms. DeLancey and Ms. Mathison back, and the Minister here for returning. Committee, we are on 8-17, activity summary, program delivery support, operations expenditure summary. Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’d like to speak just briefly to population health and particularly oral health. I understand that there’s $366,000, three positions with GNWT focused on that and I appreciate that. Is the dental surgery facility still operational in Hay River? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Mr. Abernethy.

Yes, it is.

Is that part of what the Minister was talking about with these three positions? Thank you.

No, Mr. Chair. We have dental therapist positions throughout the Northwest Territories and those dollars that I refer to are for the dental therapist positions.

About 50 percent of our positions at this point are vacant. What I was talking about previously in the motion is there’s nowhere to train new dental therapists and this is a problem, and the three territories are trying to come up with a solution that will allow us to provide training to individuals to fill these roles. This isn’t a problem unique to the Northwest Territories, this is the three territories that are suffering from this.

Our dental services for our residents are actually contracted out by the authorities with private dentists who come to the communities who provide dental services. The dental therapists enhance what can be done in communities.

Thanks to the Minister for that additional information. We’ve heard from departmental staff that 85 percent of children under the age of five have cavities in five teeth, very serious dental issues. I got the sense that the Minister is happy to put his additional efforts into planning and that that’s just a situation we have to live with.

Is that the position of the Minister, that he’s willing to accept that statistic and go with the resources we have and hope that we can get resources in the future? Eighty-five percent of Aboriginal children under the age of five. Thank you.

The provision of dental services for Aboriginal children is actually the responsibility of the federal government and we’re looking at finding ways to encourage the federal government to invest more money in this particular area. We do care very much about our youth. We recognize, without question, that oral health impacts overall health and we will continue to do things to address those issues. But we need to plan

and we need to figure out what the best programs to put in place are, and we will continue to move forward to develop a plan that will help us address oral health across the Northwest Territories.

I don’t think the status quo was good enough, but I would rather have an informed plan than no plan.

Mr. Chair, I would point out that this is not a new situation. This hasn’t just appeared or anything like that.

Moving on, the health and social services authorities administration I see has made a substantial leap this year from the last two years when it’s been almost identical. I’m wondering: is there a particular reason for that? Does that have to do with maybe the shift of shared services staff or something like that? Is there an obvious and apparent reason for that increase? Thank you.

We’ll go to Deputy Minister DeLancey.

Thank you for that explanation. Just in terms of our work with the authorities to come up with a new line of authority and clarity and continuity in the delivery of our health systems across the NWT, where are we at in that? I know we’ve talked about that for many years. Is that something that the Minister has been talking to health authorities about and is there any kind of a time frame in front of us on how we might proceed there? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister Abernethy.