Thanks for the details there from the Minister and the duplication, apparently. Is there a target date in mind to complete this work?

I just want to add one piece that I forgot to mention, and it’s basically the Hospital Insurance and Health and Social Services Administration Act is going to be coming forward with a legislative proposal. That is being drafted now, so we will be coming to committee to have some discussions around that.

Many of the back office stuff is well underway and we hope to make significant progress in the IT/IS/IM sections with Stanton and a few of the other authorities bringing them into a central back office function this fiscal year. Procurement we intend to make progress on. There are a number of the other ones, and I can provide the committee with more detail in writing about where we are with some of these back office functions.

As far as the next steps, we want to make sure we get it right, and it’s going to involve lots of discussion with committee and with residents of the Northwest Territories. We don’t have a real defined timeline, but we would like to make as much progress as we can in the life of this government. We have committed to putting some structure back in those communities and those regions where there are public administrators within the life of this government. Those things are directly correlated and directly related so we’ve got a lot of work to do.

Thank you, Minister Abernethy. Moving on with questions on this page 8-17, I have Mr. Moses.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just a quick comment but then I do have one question in particular. The Minister did release this document Measuring Success, the annual report for NWT Health and Social Services. It has a lot of good stats in it, and it just kind of goes to show when we do put money into prevention, promotion and

education that we do get results from our territorial statistics.

Specifically I want to talk to something that came out of this report. In priority 3 it mentions that the number of clients receiving home care in their home community is at 2,071. That’s 168 more than in 2011-2012, and if you average that out to each community in the Northwest Territories, it’s about 62 clients in each community.

My first question is: Does the Minister know how many home care workers we have in the communities and whether or not each community does, in fact, have home care?

Thank you, Mr. Moses. Minister Abernethy.

I’d like to thank the Member for the question. Home care is an incredibly important service that we provide in the Northwest Territories through our individual authorities, and we anticipate the demand on home care services is going to grow as we have an aging population and we’re supporting them to age in place.

The Member has averaged out the demand based on a by-community total, which may not be a fair way of splitting or rationalizing how many home support workers are in each community because every community is different, every community has got a different aging population and different people with different needs. I can tell you that we have, by authority, 29.03 positions in Yellowknife Health and Social Services Authority, home support workers, and that includes home support workers, home care nurses and other positions. I’m going to break it down and that should make it a little easier.

In Yellowknife Health and Social Services, we have 6.5 home support workers, we have homemakers rehab aides, we have registered nurses, so home care nurses, 5.6, and then there are some other related types of positions, rehab aides and whatnot. In Fort Smith we have 1.5 home care nurses, 1.5 home care LPNs, 2.75 support workers, and a medical social worker as well. In the Tlicho we have a lot: 12.5 home support workers, home care nurses, related type positions.

There is a lot of detail. It might be better if I just provide the Member with a written breakdown because it’s going to take a long time to go through. If the Member is alright with that, that’s what I’ll commit to do.

I know the importance of home care in the community and I know I did break it down on average just to see what it was in places like Yellowknife and some of the smaller communities that have a lot of our elderly senior citizens who don’t want to leave home and want to live that independent lifestyle in their community. Those are where we see some of the higher per capita

numbers, and I just want to make sure that we do have the services to support them.

Moving forward, I know I had some questions in the House, and it brought me on to seniors, which also deals with home care, but when I was looking at some of the policies and procedures under Seniors Action Plan, since it’s dealing under the territorial health services, the action plan hasn’t been updated. I’m not sure if there has been a report since 2003 on the action plan. A lot has changed since then. That’s been about 11 years. I just wanted to know if the Minister has any indication of when we’ll have a renewed action plan or if we’re going to get a report on some of the things that were outlined in the action plan. As we are getting into a higher senior population, I just want to make sure that’s addressed and we’re taking care of that moving forward and not trying to catch up after the fact.

Thank you, Mr. Moses. Minister Abernethy, the audio did not pick it up, but I think the Member did want a copy of those statistics you offered earlier. Minister Abernethy.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and we will certainly provide that.

The strategy that the Member is talking about is an old strategy, and moving forward we are going to be coming forward with a new strategy. It’s going to be informed by the continuing care report that was released just a couple of days ago to Members. That’s going to help inform the direction we take. We will be coming forward with an Aging in Place Strategy. We’re hoping to have that done by March 31st of this year, so that we can share it with

committee. That will help inform how we move forward to deal with the aging population, the number of the individuals that need different levels of support and what types of things we’re going to need to do over the coming years to help people age in place as much as possible. It won’t be just about staying in homes. It will be about the full continuum from staying at home for as long as you can and is reasonable to moving into maybe independent or assisted living and then to more of a long-term care and extended care into dementia, if necessary. We will be coming forward to have those discussions with committee.

At the same time, I would like to say that in partnership with different departments we have updated the Seniors’ Handbook, which identifies different programs and services available to seniors and elders in the Northwest Territories. That’s been updated as recently as 2012.

Thank you, Minister Abernethy. Committee, we are on activity summary 8-17, Health and Social Services, activity summary, program delivery support, operations expenditure summary, $46.490 million. Does committee agree?

Thank you, committee. Page 8-18 and 8-19 are together. Activity summary, program delivery support, grants and contributions, $24.416 million. Does committee agree?

Thank you. Page 8-20, information item, program delivery support, active positions. Any questions?

Seeing none, 8-23, activity summary, health services programs, operations expenditure summary, $209.007 million. Does committee agree? Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. A couple of questions here. There is a large increase in grants and contributions and a fairly large increase in fees and payments. Could I get an explanation of what those increases are for, from, to, et cetera?

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Mr. Abernethy.

Hold on one second.

Page 8-23. Minister Abernethy.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. With respect to grants and contributions, there have been about six-ish million dollars in increases. I can just walk through some of those. We’ve had some Collective Agreement increases for both the authorities, including Hay River. That’s about $1.9-plus million. We’ve got some initiatives we are working on that are priorities of the Legislature, which is the Midwifery Program expansion, that’s $470,000. We have the Northern Alberta Renal Program, a much smaller amount, $1,000 it looks like in direct program delivery. This is the one-time funding that we’ve talked about to replace the THSSI funding. An allocation of $1.6 million for Healthy Pregnancies, $180,000 there. We’ve got some forced growth as well, contracts with the NWT Med Association for family practitioners. It’s about $789,000. Some additional forced growth around dietary, laundry, housekeeping contract with Stanton, $93,000. Some northern allowance increases, $112,000; Economic Evergreen Plan for program vehicles, $405,000; release of costs of essential services, $306,000; professional fees, $119,000; supplies, $104,000; chemotherapy drugs have gone up $132,000; and then callback and stand-by pay, $1 million.

Thank you, Minister Abernethy. Ms. Bisaro.

Thanks for all that detail, maybe a bit too much. I’m trying to understand. This is an increase to grants and contributions and fees and

payments. A lot of the ones you mentioned were increases in what sounds like compensation. Are these contributions to health authorities? Is that why they’re under grants and contributions and fees and payments? Thank you.

Yes, these are grants and contributions going to the health authorities. Then under fees and payments, insured services for non-NWT residents went up $4 million.