Just for clarity, the Midwifery Program that was in Yellowknife was never funded. It actually never had core dollars to fund that program. It was funding the authority had taken out of other programs in order to create midwifery services.
I’m still committed to midwifery services, I always have been, which is one of the reasons we are looking at re-envisioning how we roll out midwifery services over the next couple of years.
As I indicated, we had planned to move forward with Beaufort-Delta. Things look like they might be changing. There have been some alternate proposals submitted to us on how to deliver services to the Beaufort-Delta, including one position that could be a nurse practitioner to be an educator, mentor for community health nurses and support them as well as support the physicians who happen to be located in the community.
What we would like to do is move forward with a territorial model based out of Yellowknife beginning planning in 2015-16 so we could have a full rollout in 2016-17 and midwifery services. We envision it as being a multi-part program, the territorial program, and it would be reasonable to locate that program out of Yellowknife in order to enable a broader scope of services to the women who may utilize those services.
It would also be a program that could support all communities throughout the Northwest Territories by providing expertise, guidance to community health nurses who happen to be involved with the pre- and postnatal services throughout the Northwest Territories.
The second part would actually be supporting birthing in Yellowknife for individuals who wish to have midwifery support in Yellowknife. So, a multi-part program. I have sent a letter outlining this
opportunity to the Standing Committee on Social Programs, and before we move in that direction I am looking forward to their feedback and support. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.