Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate the comments from the Member. I mean, we’ve had many of these discussions in committee and many of the things I’ve heard Members say today are things that I’ve also said and I share many of his opinions on this. We have a lot of work to do, but I think good things are happening.
I agree with the Member that the transition to one system isn’t the final solution, but it’s an important, integral part of improving services in the Northwest Territories. But it by itself will not help us improve the health results for residents of the Northwest Territories. There are many things that we need to do.
The Member did talk a little bit about some of the accounting systems and why they’re different, and they shouldn’t be and we are bringing them in line. The authorities are working to come onto a similar platform as far as the accounting systems they use. This is being rolled in, obviously, as part of the transition, but we’re not waiting for that to finish, we’re doing that work now. I don’t know if you’ve noticed. The document in front of you today looks a lot different than it looked last year, and one of the reasons it looks so different is a significant portion of the system funding that we have in the health and social services systems in the authorities. The authorities report financially, based on direction from the department on different indicators that you’d see or different criteria that are identified within CIHI. So this new structure that you see in your book today provides more detail on how the authorities are actually spending their money than we’ve seen before. This new structure also aligns with the national reporting structure defined by the Canadian Institute for Health Information, so CIHI. So we’re coming in line with what the authorities are doing and have their reporting, which is going to
make it easier in the future. I say that only because as I’ve gone through this document it’s quite a bit different than the last time and it gets a little confusing, but we’ve tried really hard to lay it out as if we had done this in previous years.
Just so we’re clear, the authorities were already aligned internally with CIHI for their financial reporting; however, financials had previously been repackaged by the department when we were reporting them, which seemed like a redundant exercise and a little confusing. We feel that there is more transparency on how the money is spent and how it’s seen within the new information in front of you and we hope and we believe this is going to help facilitate improved accountability and analysis. It might be a little confusing as we go through it today, but it should be better in future years.
A couple other things. I mean, we have put in the 32 indicators for health performance here in the Northwest Territories. That’s just come into effect. We’re going to start having year after year after year data which is going to help us focus our attention to where it needs to be focused. We’re also always part of CIHI reporting and we have the information available as well.
The authorities, in recognition that the transition of health is coming, like I said, we’re not waiting. The authorities are actually working on getting on the same quality assurance system so that they can start providing reports on their quality assurance and improving quality within their facilities and their communities using the same types of criteria, information and analysis.
One area where we know there are some inconsistencies, and I thank the Member for bringing it up, is in some of our Aboriginal health results, but I do have to say these kinds of population health indicators don’t really respond to interventions in the short term. They do take a while for many of these interventions. Much of the work that has been initiated by committee and by the government, they do take a bit of time to actually see long-term results, and you’re not necessarily going to see them in 232 days or 535 days, but you should start to see them start to be rolled out and start to be effective.
We are getting these things out, and I do want to thank committee for all their support in the years as we’ve brought forward these initiatives, and the committee has brought forward initiatives. We’ve started to roll them out and we will start to see results on them.
Back to the Aboriginal health, I think we should all be really proud of the Aboriginal health and community wellness division. The work that they’re doing is groundbreaking. We’ve been recognized by other jurisdictions for being a real leader in this area. The work we’re starting around things like cultural competence is in line with best practices
and recommendations from recent reports. One recent report was the First Nations second class treatment, and the author of that report is actually going to come to our wellness gathering and is going to be one of our keynote speakers. The Aboriginal health and community wellness is taking a real strong leadership role in getting the cultural competencies out there and trying to improve results for a significant 50-plus percent of our population here in the Northwest Territories.
Once again, thanks to the Member for his comments. I appreciate them. I look forward to getting into detail. I’m glad he brought up the accountability structure stuff so we had an opportunity to talk a little bit about why this document is different. We did share a letter with committee, but I’ve got to admit, when I went through this the first time it was like, um, what? But go through it a couple of times and it makes a little bit more sense. I did warn you. I wrote a letter.