Thank you, Madam Chair. I have a number of issues. There always are a huge number of issues with this department and most are comments. I don’t need the Minister to respond. I will try and ask my questions when I get to the page on detail.
I want to start off with the issue of continuing care. We did get a report from the department, from the Minister, but it did not commit to an action plan, and that’s a concern for me. There doesn’t seem to be, at least not that we’ve seen on paper, a cohesive, coordinated effort towards care for our seniors. From what I can gather, the mentality seems to be let’s have them age in place, and I’m supportive of that, but I am very concerned about facilities that are not being built in some communities and Yellowknife is one. The Minister is well aware of my concerns about the need for Avens to get their project going in the spring, and I know that the Minister is working and the department is working on that with Avens.
The child and family services system has had some revision and the Minister has kept us up to date on that for which I think committee is grateful. I understand there is some legislation coming forward and I look forward to the details in that legislation.
Concern about chronic disease. We’ve mentioned this, I think, probably every year running. Chronic disease is one of the biggest drains on our budget, I think. I will have some questions around the closing of the diabetes clinic here in Yellowknife and what we are doing both in Yellowknife and in all of our communities to try and tackle the huge issue of diabetes. There was, I think, some analysis that was going to be done, and I will be asking some questions about that.
A concern for me is that we haven’t managed yet to figure out how to provide supplementary health benefits for people who are working but don’t get any supplementary health benefit coverage. We have indigent coverage, but there is a group of people, and a fairly small number, but there are people within the Northwest Territories who don’t have any supplementary health benefit coverage at all, and that is a concern. The last time I asked the answer was basically, well, it’s a large amount of money and we don’t have the money from within to fund it. I can accept that answer but it doesn’t make me feel any better. We still ought to be planning to cover those people who are not covered.
The Day Shelter in Yellowknife and in other communities falls under this department. There was going to be an analysis, I think, of the Day Shelter in Yellowknife, and I haven’t seen that, I don’t believe. I do know that the City of Yellowknife has put a fair amount of money into that Day Shelter. I think they just recently advised us at a recent meeting that they had increased the amount of money that they have put into the Yellowknife Day Shelter. That concerns me and that, albeit it’s in my community, the majority of the people using that Day Shelter are not from my community, and I think the territorial government ought to be funding a larger portion of that Day Shelter cost.
The Medical Travel Policy has been under review for quite some time. I have concerns about if we are ever going to see the results of that review.
A couple more. The Midwifery Program. I have to mention the Midwifery Program, and I believe the Minister’s remarks talk about exploring opportunities to advance the design of a territorial program in 2015-2016. I appreciate that we, the royal we, the government is moving as fast as possible to get midwifery established in more communities, but this community of Yellowknife had a very successful Midwifery Program a number of years ago and it has pretty much dropped off the face of the earth and there has been very little mention in anything from the department or from the Minister about reinstating the Midwifery Program in Yellowknife, and that’s a huge concern for me and for many constituents.
Mental health and addictions services, it’s another large portion of the budget. Mr. Yakeleya has talked about one aspect of it. It covers many things. I think my concern is that we don’t have enough services to deal with the people that need to be dealt with, and I’m not sure, it’s a big problem for the department. I don’t know quite how we can better service our residents, but people who need counselling for mental health issues often don’t get it and there’s a long waiting list, and/or they don’t have the services available in their community. Certainly the services at Stanton are not optimum and there is very little opportunity, from what I understand, for people needing assistance with their mental health issues to get the service and to get the programs through the hospital. It’s an area that is a concern and I’m not too sure that we’re going to find an answer. Certainly not today. But I just want to say that it’s one of the issues within this department that is a big problem for me.
I’ll leave it at that. I will have questions when we get to detail.