Thank you, Madam Chair. Thanks to the Member for his comments. I too am very excited about the opening of the Hay River hospital. I know that the Members did have an opportunity to tour that facility last summer and got to see the size and the scope of that particular building and the amazing things that are going to be going on there, including midwifery, in Hay River. We will be able to support births. I believe we might even have some births anticipated for this month. That’s fantastic news that we’ve been able to make that progress.
I really appreciate the Member’s comments on the system navigator. We’ve been getting a lot of really positive comments and feedback from residents from across the territory who have had the opportunity to benefit from the support from the system navigator and we are very excited about that particular position.
The cancer care coordinator position that is being developed is actually currently out for competition and we’re hoping that it will be filled soon. We thought we had been there a couple times. We thought we had it filled a couple times and then staffing issues have gotten in the way. It’s kind of frustrating but we believe we’re going to get it staffed soon.
On-the-land programming, we’ve actually been going to different Aboriginal governments and organizations in the Northwest Territories seeking their input and asking them to get engaged. We’ve had pretty much all the Aboriginal governments here in the Northwest Territories engaged. In the South Slave we contacted, for example, the Dehcho and the Metis Nation.
Nats'ejee K'eh, you’re right; sitting empty is a waste. Tomorrow and Thursday Chief Fabian is holding a conference in that facility to start identifying some of the things they’d like to do and what other ideas might exist for that facility. We’re really looking forward to their feedback, once they get out of there. We’ve had some ideas in the past, but at the end of the day we want to make sure that we’re cooperating and working with Chief Fabian and K’atlodeeche. We’re really looking forward to seeing what they have to say.
Mental health wait times, I’d love to talk to the Member about that, maybe not in this particular setting because it’s not something that I’m actually aware that there’s mental health waiting lists in Hay River. I’d like to get a little bit more detail and try to understand what’s going on there a little bit, so maybe the Member and I can have a conversation afterwards.
With the health transformation, and I’ve said it once and I’m happy to say it again, once the legislation passes, recognizing that we want to make sure that we continue to get input from people as we move forward, our intent is to put in interim wellness committees in the communities, including Hay River, so that it won’t be just a public administrator, and when the system goes live in 2016, at that point official committees will be established. We’re hoping to have some interim committees in the life of this government, assuming that the legislation passes, and then we are intending to have the official committees, including a wellness committee in Hay River, established in April 2016.
I hear the Member loud and clear and I heard the residents of Hay River loud and clear and I heard the staff of the Hay River Health and Social Services Authority loud and clear. There’s real interest for them to come into the public service, but we need to make sure we do it right. As we have done with all other governments, as we’ve transitioned them into the GNWT, we are going to work closely with their bargaining unit. We’re going to work closely with the Hay River Health and
Social Services Authority. We’re also going to work really closely with superann to ensure that, when we’re ready to bring them over, we have a full idea of what the costs are going to be, the full cost implications and the staff are aware clearly of what the benefits and challenges of coming into this system are. We want to make sure that everybody is informed and is part of the solution as we move forward. Thank you, Madam Chair.