Thanks, Mr. Chair. I do want to just articulate quickly that Yellowknife is not the only place where this diabetes program has been going on. Hay River, Fort Smith and Inuvik offer a targeted diabetes education and care program through their authorities by teams of educators that include nurses, nurse practitioners, dietitians and physicians. The Tlicho Community Services Agency, in partnership with the Tlicho Government, is training local diabetes educators to work with their nurse practitioner who will work directly with people diagnosed with diabetes to learn how to manage their disease.

Funding from the Canadian Partnership Against Cancer has allowed us to adapt our BETTER project approach, which is a great program, and their tools for doctors and nurses and CHRs as well to work with patients to identify their risk and learn self-management techniques for a range of chronic conditions which do include diabetes. So there are a number of things that are happening in the area of diabetes.

I would like to go a little further and say that there are gaps. We know there are gaps. The lack of a territorial program, in my opinion, is a gap. The Joint Leadership Council and the authority CEOs have already identified this as a top priority. Once we actually move forward to a single system here in the Northwest Territories, we’re developing a territory-wide program to meet the needs of our residents and our people rather than fragmented approaches. Hopefully, we’ll be in a position where we can pool some funding to develop something that really meets the needs of our people across the entire territory. But at this point I would say the lack of consistency and regularity is certainly a gap and it’s a problem that we would like to address once we move to one authority.