This is page numbers 6559 – 6620 of the Hansard for the 17th Assembly, 5th Session. The original version can be accessed on the Legislative Assembly's website or by contacting the Legislative Assembly Library. The word of the day was know.

Topics

David Ramsay

David Ramsay Kam Lake

Thank

you. I’m very well

aware of the situation in the port of Hay River, being a former Minister of Transportation, and yes, we do talk extensively about dredging. Not just in Hay River, but there are other areas in the Northwest Territories that require dredg

ing, and I’m fully aware

of the situation in Hay River, Mr. Speaker. Thank you.

The Speaker

The Speaker Jackie Jacobson

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Member for Range Lake, Mr. Dolynny.

Daryl Dolynny

Daryl Dolynny Range Lake

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In April of this year, there was a system upgrade to our Stanton Territorial Hospital MEDI-patient system that resulted in more than 1,500 diagnostic imaging reports not being returned to the practitioner who had requested them between April 1st and August 6th of 2015. Members of this House were flagged on August 11, 2015, by the Minister of Health, and I’ll stress “that some quality assurance regulators and digital imaging at Stanton were noticed and that some health system patients were affected but were never disclosed the e

xact impact.” It wasn’t until the

following week of August 18th , the Minister, through

a CBC radio morning show, disclosed the magnitude of the issue. As of this date, there has been no formal press release or formal health advisory to the public.

My questions today are for the Minister of Health and Social Services. Mr. Speaker, I think many of us are still concerned about this situation, so can the Minister give the House and the public at large a formal update and maybe indicate what legal risks are still looming? Thank you.

The Speaker

The Speaker Jackie Jacobson

Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. Mr. Abernethy.

Glen Abernethy

Glen Abernethy Great Slave

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and thank you to the Member for bringing this to the floor of the House. This was a significant issue here in the Northwest Territories within the Department of Health and Social Services and very troubling to both the department and the residents of the Northwest Territories, I’m sure. The physicians, the practitioners here in the Northwest Territories stood up and reviewed every one of the 1,500 files to determine who, if anybody, was at risk, who got information, when they got information and how they got information. At the end of the day, there were eight individuals who should have got information prior to us discovering this problem, and those individuals have been followed up with accordingly.

I do want to take this opportunity to applaud the doctors, the nurses and all the practitioners who stood up to address this issue and to resolve it. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Daryl Dolynny

Daryl Dolynny Range Lake

I appreciate the Minister giving the opportunity to explain the current situation. My concern today is still about the risk management and the liability when such an issue is before the House and is discovered. So, can the Minister indicate, what is his departme

nt’s formal health advisory

protocol, given the seriousness of such a situation? Thank you.

Glen Abernethy

Glen Abernethy Great Slave

When it comes to patient safety and patient care, we will defer to the medical practice on ensuring that the situation is dealt with. At present, when situations like this occur, the first thing that must happen is to stop the problem from continuing, to remove all opportunities for harm. That was done in this particular case. The second step is to follow up with the individuals who may have been impacted, which was also done in this case. At that point we would move forward with some notification to the public, once we understand the magnitude, scope, and the residents have in fact been dealt with. Thank you. Mr. Speaker.

Daryl Dolynny

Daryl Dolynny Range Lake

I think I had a very specific question there, so I’ll reword it here. Really there isn’t anything in legislation that protects the public in terms of an issue of this gravity, and the only legislation pursuant to a public health advisory is Section 7 and 20 of the Public Health Act, and unfortunately, it is silent on a situation such as a digital imaging mishap.

So, does the Minister feel as strongly as I do, that a more formal process for health alerting protocol is needed for grave situations, especially for such things as this digital imaging mishap? Thank you.

Glen Abernethy

Glen Abernethy Great Slave

I do agree with the Member. In fact, I agree so much that when this issue came to my attention, I did ask for a formal external review to be done to help us determine how on earth we

didn’t know before August 6th , how the

situation happened and how we can, as a system, better respond in the future to make sure that our people are informed in a timely way.

I do also want to recognize, having said that, we still have to recognize the importance of the practitioners and their obligations under a situation like this, which is: stop the harm, work with the patients, then communicate. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The Speaker

The Speaker Jackie Jacobson

Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Dolynny.

Daryl Dolynny

Daryl Dolynny Range Lake

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Again I thank the Minister here. I just want to make one thing perfectly clear that just still doesn’t add up. So, we were reminded multiple times by the Minister of Health that on August 6, 2015, the Department of Health and Social Services was informed of this

digital imaging technical issue, and then on the very same day, the vendor was brought in. So, I believe everyone would be a little sceptic that nothing works that timely and this fast in this government.

So, can the Minister indicate, is it possible that this issue was known by the department prior to August 6, 2015?

Glen Abernethy

Glen Abernethy Great Slave

The external review will help us identify exactly what was known and when. The department was not aware of this particular situation until August 6th . I have had a couple

briefings on this particular issue with staff from Stanton and staff from the department and there have been some rumblings out there. In fact, I understand that there were some issues between Yellowknife Health and Social Services and Stanton, but when they reviewed those they thought those were an internal issue and didn’t realize the territorial scope of this problem until August 6th . At that time,

and I just want to correct the Member, the issue with the vendor was ticketed, which means they were made aware. The vendor actually didn’t get into Yellowknife until a couple days later. But as soon as the issue became aware, as soon as it was understood that this was not just a communication error between two authorities but this was a territorial issue, the vendors were immediately ticketed. They were ticketed on the 6th . It took them a couple days

to get in, but they started working on the problem on that day, once they were officially ticketed.

The Speaker

The Speaker Jackie Jacobson

Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. The Member for Inuvik Boot Lake, Mr. Moses.

Alfred Moses

Alfred Moses Inuvik Boot Lake

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have questions for the Minister of Transportation today. It’s regarding our airport road in Inuvik. Any Member that has driven that road or has done any visits to Inuvik over the summer

– it’s not even recently but

just throughout the summer

– knows how bad a

situation that road is in.

I’d like to ask the Minister, what is the plan for paving that road or fixing that road from our airport in Inuvik to the community of Inuvik? What is our short-term and long-term plan for that road?

The Speaker

The Speaker Jackie Jacobson

Thank you, Mr. Moses. The Minister of Transportation, Mr. Beaulieu.

Tom Beaulieu

Tom Beaulieu Tu Nedhe

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The plan is to improve the airport road with the Building Canada Fund. We have that particular project in the second bundle that has gone to the federal government. We’re anticipating that we will have some report back from the government, well, approval back from the federal government early in 2016.

Alfred Moses

Alfred Moses Inuvik Boot Lake

In anticipation of the Building Canada Plan Fund to look at putting money into this project,

in the interim what is the government doing now to address this issue? It is quite drastic, and as I mentioned in Committee of the Whole yesterday, there have been incidents where there have been accidents.

I’d like to ask the Minister, in the interim what are we doing to address the severity of this road?

Tom Beaulieu

Tom Beaulieu Tu Nedhe

The entire project is $11 million. With that, our intention is to survey

– and the

survey is commencing now

– and do some crushing

and producing material and strengthen the roadway. Then we intend to replace culverts where a lot of the culverts have sunk and collapsed. Also, at the end, once the road is built to a strength that we’re happy with, then we’re going to be chipsealing the road. We are going to wait for the Building Canada Plan before the actual construction begins.

Just with our relationship with Infrastructure Canada, we found that it’s better to wait and then they’re more apt to fund the whole project if we wait and start after they provide us approvals.

Alfred Moses

Alfred Moses Inuvik Boot Lake

The Minister made mention of chipsealing the highway there, and you know and I know, coming into the Legislative Assembly the road that has just been fixed over out on the highway here. They chipsealed that this summer and there are already some issues of potholes and those kinds of things. It’s going to be recurring in terms of having to do work and more work on it.

In some of the more significant areas on that access road from the airport to Inuvik, can that work be more permanent in terms of a paving project rather than chipsealing where we’re going to have to continue to do that maintenance work over and over? Can the Minister,

while he’s doing his survey, look at areas,

especially that one little S-curve where we can get better, longer stability in those roads by paving it rather than continue to chipseal and put money into that road over and over?

Tom Beaulieu

Tom Beaulieu Tu Nedhe

Problems with chipseal are not due to the actual chipseal itself; it’s due to what’s underneath. What we intend to do with the Inuvik airport road is to rebuild sections where there are issues. However, we are also open to trying other products that do work better. If we find that there’s a product that works better almost under any condition, then we would look at that, but the plan now is to rebuild the road, strengthen it and chipseal.

The Speaker

The Speaker Jackie Jacobson

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Moses.

Alfred Moses

Alfred Moses Inuvik Boot Lake

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to ask

the Minister, what’s the timeline that we can see some construction and some work on the road so that residents, visitors and tourists can see that road being fixed? Is there a timeline that we can start seeing the work being started?

Tom Beaulieu

Tom Beaulieu Tu Nedhe

We are optimistic that approvals will be in very early 2016. As soon as we have approvals, we intend to produce the material, so we will start the crushing. Probably somewhere in the very first quarter of 2016 we should have the crushing done and then the roadwork will actually begin next summer.

The Speaker

The Speaker Jackie Jacobson

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.

Robert Hawkins

Robert Hawkins Yellowknife Centre

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The other day, on Tuesday to be precise, the Finance Minister indicated that considering reductions to the workforce to ensure expenditures do not exceed revenues is part of the obligation they have to provide the 18th Assembly with the best information

possible.

Further to that, the Minister of Public Works said today in the House, with a flat revenue outlook and the need to take a hard look at how we spend our money in coming years, operating effectively and efficiently is more important than ever.

In light of what both Ministers have commented on and stated in this House, what is the Department of Human Resources doing in their transition planning with respect to reducing public servants as a cost- cutting option and measure going forward?