Good afternoon, colleagues. Item 2, Ministers’ statements. The honourable Minister of Health and Social Services, Mr. Abernethy.

Mr. Speaker, today I am pleased to announce the official launch of the Med-Response call centre. Members of the Standing Committee on Social Programs joined me earlier today at Stanton Territorial Hospital to celebrate this milestone.

The Government of the Northwest Territories is breaking new ground in Canada with this single window approach to clinical consultation and air ambulance triage and dispatch. Med-Response will improve access to services and quality of care for people across the Northwest Territories, by providing immediate clinical support to health care practitioners in all communities via a simple toll-free number.

Med-Response is not a service directly available to the public, Mr. Speaker, but our patients and their families will experience immediate benefit. Previously, when faced with a potentially critical situation, a community health nurse had to make multiple calls to access physician advice, order an air ambulance, provide updates and coordinate information flow. He or she would do this while trying to support and stabilize an ill or injured patient and assess whether an air ambulance was required.

From now on one phone call to Med-Response will give our community health care providers access to all the clinical support they need. The call centre, located in Yellowknife, is manned by emergency medical dispatchers and emergency medical coordinators who are registered nurses. They are on the line immediately with the community health practitioner, allowing several things to happen at

once. The Dispatcher can immediately contact our air ambulance provider, while the coordinator can assess the situation and get the appropriate physician or specialist on the line. Coordinating the whole process on one multi-party phone line replaces numerous calls, repeating the same information to various parties.

Reducing the time a community health practitioner has to spend on the phone allows them to focus on the patient. In urgent situations an air ambulance can be dispatched earlier and eliminate situations when medevac flights are delayed because of telephone reception issues in remote locations.

In addition to improved communication, faster response times and a reduced risk of error, all calls to Med-Response are recorded, providing a higher level of quality assurance.

Mr. Speaker, although the call centre officially opened today, staff have been testing scenarios and introducing the service since November 2014. While cost savings is not the primary goal of Med-Response, we are already seeing potential for efficiencies. In some situations immediate access to physician support has confirmed an air ambulance was not required. In other situations the call centre has been able to deploy air ambulance flights that are already en route to pick up another patient, thereby reducing the number of flights and turnaround time.

Mr. Speaker, the Department of Health and Social Services and Stanton Territorial Hospital have put in place an evaluation framework so that we can monitor how Med-Response is improving the system and our services. In the future we see potential for broader application of this service. For example, the call centre may play a key role in supporting first responders or health practitioners in communities without resident nurses.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to conclude with a quote from a community health nurse who has already had the opportunity to use the Med-Response service. She says, “When it’s after hours and you’re all by yourself, Med-Response gives you more time to focus on the patient instead of stopping all the time to pick up the phone. It’s pretty efficient. You feel like the team is right there for you.”

I am proud of the work that has been done to make Med-Response a reality and of the exceptional

service the team at Stanton is already providing. Med-Response is one example of how working as a single system across the territory can help realize our vision of best health, best care, for a better future. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. The honourable Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Lafferty.

Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate Ms. Lea Lamoureux, principal of Kaw Tay Whee School in Detah, on being recognized as one of Canada’s outstanding principals for 2015.

She is the most recent in a long list of Northwest Territories recipients who have been recognized for their dedication and passion for teaching our students in the Northwest Territories.

The Learning Partnership recently announced Ms. Lamoureux as one of 40 exceptional educators from across Canada. Through her leadership, Kaw Tay Whee School is now a vibrant learning environment, connecting families and the community of Detah.

Ms. Lamoureux and her staff have built an active, inclusive environment in their school, where everyone strives to do their best. Ms. Lamoureux’s leadership, with the dedicated support of her staff and community, has resulted in library and classroom resources to support a balanced literacy program, and a new computer lab to help students develop reading, inquiry and writing skills, with 80 percent of students now reading at or above grade level.

They have brought a community elder into the school to work with students in the Weledeh language and to teach skills in traditional activities like beading, sewing, working with hide and drying fish. They established an Aboriginal Role Model Program that brings in authors, singers, naturopathic doctors and other professionals to promote career pathways and the importance of education. With her guidance, her students created a story in clay and turned it into a book called “Walking in Dettah,” in English and Weledeh. You can find this book at the Yellowknife Book Cellar.

She has gone beyond the walls of her school and reached out to her students’ families, and every family now has alarm clocks to support the “On Time by 9” initiative. There is a family literacy initiative in place, and every family with children under 12 has a family library based on the children’s ages, interests and reading levels.

She also reached out to the community and forged key partnerships, which raised over $400,000 for

resources and programming that focus on literacy, science and technology, active living and nutrition programming. She and her staff were successful in securing funding for a community playground.

Mr. Speaker, I visited Ms. Lamoureux’s school this past October. I saw a passionate educator, engaged students and an environment full of activity and energy. Lea Lamoureux personifies everything we are working on in the Education Renewal Initiative. Through this initiative, principals have critical roles in creating inspirational and healthy learning environments and they are key connections in the school-community relationship. Ms. Lamoureux intuitively understands that this is the way to create the best school and learning experiences for her students.

Ms. Lamoureux now has the opportunity to attend a five-day Executive Leadership Training Program delivered by the internationally renowned Rotman School of Management later this month. Once complete, she will join some 500 exceptional educators that comprise the National Academy of Canada’s Outstanding Principals.

Please join me in congratulating Ms. Lea Lamoureux and her dedication to her students, community, and excellence in education. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Deputy Premier, Mr. Lafferty.

Mr. Speaker, I wish to advise Members that the Honourable Bob McLeod and the Honourable David Ramsay will be absent from the House today to attend the Missing and Murdered Aboriginal Women National Round Table in Ottawa. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Item 3, Members’ statements. The honourable Member for Nahendeh, Mr. Menicoche.

Good afternoon, Mr. Speaker. Today I want to raise an issue where grandparents have been denied caregiver status when their grandchildren have been apprehended by Social Services.

When this happens in our small communities, our children are sent to another community like Fort Simpson and fostered to homes there. They are usually never fostered in the home community with

which they are familiar, where they have close extended family and childhood friends.

Throughout Canada it is increasingly common that grandparents are raising their grandchildren. Here in the Northwest Territories when our Aboriginal children are apprehended, grandparents and extended family are never seen as a first choice in placement of the children. Our jurisdiction has the highest rate of child apprehensions in the country, and approximately 90 percent of the children who are in the child and family services system are Aboriginal.

For years the Social Programs committee of the Legislative Assembly has been calling for a less adversarial approach. The committee has called on the government to put into practice what the act already stipulates, the use of the least intrusive measures whenever possible. The committee has likewise been calling on the department to use a more collaborative approach in specific cases, like in a small community, social workers and courts might engage in non-adversarial outreach by meeting with the grandparents instead of apprehending the children and sending them to foster care in a larger centre. Social workers might then have discovered that the grandparents were accustomed to caring for their grandkids and, further, that grandparents were willing and able to serve as foster parents. Considerable upheaval and distress to the children could be prevented.

On another note, our child care legislation provides for and recognizes the Aboriginal custom adoption practices, a less legalistic procedure where parents give up their child to a family to love and care for as their own, even verbally. We should also design our child apprehension laws to the same effect, recognizing Aboriginal custom and involve grandparents and extended families a role in caring for their children in their communities, not apprehending them and carrying them off to another community, which is so reminiscent of the residential schooling system.

I will have questions for the Minister of Social Services during question period. Mahsi cho, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to thank you and all my colleagues in the House for the pinkness yesterday. Anything we as Members can do to raise awareness of bullying is a good thing.

There was significant activity in the Great Hall at noon yesterday. Some 120 students from four Yellowknife schools were here for an anti-bullying

event sponsored by the northern chapter of the Public Service Alliance of Canada. Thank you to Jack Bourassa, Lorraine Hewlett, Mark Populous and other PSAC staff for once again organizing this event, and a huge thank you to the students and teachers from William McDonald, Weledeh, St. Joseph’s and J.H. Sissons schools for taking part in the event. Not like the flash mob that we had a couple of years ago, but well worth seeing and hearing.

Ecole St. Joseph’s School did a skit about bullying and introduced us to the Anti-Bully League. William McDonald School brought two classes. The grade sevens shared their thoughts and comments on bullying. The grade sixes shared personal stories about bullying. J.H. Sissons School spoke en Francais and asked questions to make us think about bullying. They also did a skit to illustrate bullying and an intervention. Weledeh School brought their Think Pink Gang. They added members to the gang by inducting three people at the rally. It was my honour and privilege to be one of those three who were inducted into the Pink Shirt Gang as an honorary member, along with Steve Daniels from Education, Culture and Employment and Constable Maury Sparvier of the RCMP.

Bullying gets more awareness than it used to, but it’s still a major problem in our schools, our workplaces, our sports arenas, our playgrounds and our seniors homes. As the kids said yesterday, more than once, it’s up to each one of us, no matter our age, to fight against bullying when we see it. Recognize it, speak about it, stop it.

Mr. Speaker, we as leaders must ensure we don’t model the slightest action that could be conceived as bullying. Think before you speak or act, and remember that each of us reacts differently to words or actions. We must not assume that what is okay for us is not bullying for someone else.

In closing I want to again thank the wonderful, creative, committed students who highlighted bullying yesterday and also thank the Public Service Alliance of Canada for organizing the event. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In my Member’s statement I would like to give encouragement and support to the young athletes in our small communities. Last weekend girls under 15 from Deline won the basketball championship in the Northwest Territories, and previous to that they won first place in Grande Prairie.

In the North we have some really great athletes, even in the large centres such as Yellowknife and

Hay River and in our small communities of Deline, Norman Wells and Colville Lake. However, I want to say how much we appreciate the young kids coming out in whatever type of conditions to do their best for the North and for their community. Even with Colville Lake, no school gym, but they come out and they come into Norman Wells or Tulita.

The young kids from Colville Lake marvel at the school gym in those small communities as much as the young kids coming from Deline come to Yellowknife and look at the facilities they have here and they marvel at that. Yet they try hard. A big thanks goes out to the teachers who put out the extra hours for activities to make it happen for their young students. That’s what we want to support.

I think the parents need to be congratulated for raising money to take kids outside our communities. It takes thousands and thousands of dollars to bring kids from the Sahtu to Yellowknife for soccer, basketball or volleyball. We have to say thank you to the parents and encourage them to continue on with this and to look at ways that we can continue to support our young students going to school and playing the sports so that one day they may be recognized. We have students now in the Canada Winter Games and slowly up to the level of the Olympics and professionals. We have done it and I’d like to continue to support the families and the schools in the small communities and make sure that our students get the best type of training ever. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Member for Inuvik Boot Lake, Mr. Moses.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This weekend about 130 athletes plus coaches and chaperones from 15 communities across the Northwest Territories, representing all regions, will be coming to Yellowknife and participating in the 3rd Annual Traditional Games championships.

The importance of these games goes beyond just the physical nature. It creates a social intelligence within these young athletes but also spiritual and cultural revitalization in terms of these students participating in games that their ancestors did for survival.

There’s going to be 80 events over at William McDonald this weekend, and I encourage all Members to go and show your support to your constituents and these young athletes who are coming in and participating in these games.

As I said, these games have helped in the revitalization of Arctic sports and Dene games throughout the Northwest Territories, but it goes beyond that. It shows that we’re sharing our

cultures, we’re bringing games from the Beaufort-Delta, sharing with people in the Deh Cho, in the South Slave and we’re taking games from the South Slave and sharing with people in all other regions. It’s just a really great time and it shows our traditions, our northern hospitality and our northern way of life.

I’d also like to take this opportunity just to thank the elders who carry these games and traditions and pass them on to our young coaches and young athletes so that they can continue to show these games and show our traditions and cultures to our next generation.

As I’ve always said, events like these could not be done without support. So I’d like to take this opportunity to give a sincere thank you and acknowledge the hard work, dedication and commitment of all the volunteers, coaches, officials and, most importantly, the Aboriginal Sport Circle that has been engaging our communities, who have been taking these games to all 33 communities, taking equipment in there and leaving the equipment in the communities so that the students can continue to practice these games.

Just before I finish here, I’d like to give a quick message to the athletes. This weekend just play fair, try your hardest, show sportsmanship, which is embodied in the games that you’re playing, but most of all I want the athletes and the young this weekend just to have fun. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In business when one is faced with limited cash flow and facing tough expense control, you look at your balance sheet to find ways to leverage your assets. In all cases, whether you’re in government or in business, you strive to isolate financial risk and look at the balance sheet of self-financing your paid service models.

One such asset and paid service model is our Yellowknife Airport, to which the current governance is in dire need of a shake-up. Mr. Speaker, let me explain.

The Yellowknife Airport is under the care and regulations of the GNWT. This entity is at financial risk to taxpayers and is not self-financing. In reality, it is bleeding money to the tune of over $2 million a year and this shortfall is picked up by the taxpayer. In this age of financial stewardship this is unacceptable, even for a government, and especially a government teetering on the edge of a financial cliff.

What is the solution? To turn this around one would have to consider the success of some key metrics of financial performance, customer service, safety and a longer term vision. One would have to consider maximizing the value for the shareholder and for the community in terms of its socio-economic returns. There needs to be the right balance, the right governance, the right owners, the right efficiency motivation and the right economic objectives, which today are severely lacking.

It goes without saying, no two airports are alike, and similarly, no two communities have identical objectives for their airport assets. But without a clear vision for the role of the Yellowknife Airport and our government’s inability to continue at the helm, the stakeholders suffer, the community suffers and the taxpayers suffer as well. This is not a winning combination.

I will have questions later today for the Minister of Transportation.

Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. Member for Mackenzie Delta, Mr. Blake.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The former mayor and council in Fort McPherson were in the process of planning for a new arena for the community. Since then, a public administrator has been put in place to administer the services for the next three years. I am concerned that this major piece of infrastructure will be put on hold during this time.

A new arena is much needed in Fort McPherson, and I would like to propose that the public administrator begin consultation with the community to design a new arena for Fort McPherson.

I will have questions for the Minister later today.

Thank you, Mr. Blake. Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I had planned to talk about a health issue today and I think one just sort of overpowered me and I felt that I had to address it.

Overwhelmingly, I feel troubled with the way and the approach the Mental Health Act is presently taking today. Although I certainly, like every single one of my colleagues here both on this side of the House and the other side of the House, will welcome a new act to help address the problems that we all see today, there are ways we can help today.

The other day I was asking the Health Minister about trying to find another way. There is another

way. I’ve been doing research with support from our advice here and we can find a way to help people right now. There are options that are available. There are tools in our tool kit of legislative power to change the lives of others.

In speaking to the loved ones who have family members who are good people, but sometimes they get off their meds because they decide that they know what’s best. Even though all the medical advice and all the facts prove otherwise, they decide what they want to do. It leaves the hospitals and loved ones paralyzed while we watch the continued downward spiral of these people. The RCMP will say there’s nothing they can do because unless they break the law, cause a crime or hurt themselves, they must stand by. The system itself is part of the problem. The system is the Mental Health Act that we are dealing with today.

We’ve heard the Minister with the anticipation that maybe if everything lines up it may come in May, but we also know that this is very unlikely. We’ve heard the Health Minister say that he will probably be in a position to table the new Mental Health Act late in this Assembly, sometime in the fall. That means the new Assembly will be choosing the destiny, the direction the new Mental Health Act will be taking. It will be up to the 18th Assembly to get

immediately up to speed on these initiatives and to take some action. I can’t speak for the 18th Assembly. No one can until it’s in place to make its decisions going forward.

But as I said, there is another way. Through hard work and a bit of research provided to me, there has been inspiration and we’ve come up with a solution. We’ve come up with a small change to the present Mental Health Act to provide much respite needed by families.

We’ve seen a recent case where someone was not criminally responsible. Why? There are so many reasons why, but the fact is things can be done. All I want to say as my time runs out is there are options before us and I’ll be bringing this issue back up in the near future. There are ways we can help make a difference to these families and save lives today.

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The Member for Hay River North, Mr. Bouchard.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It’s with pride that I rise again today to announce that Buffalo Airways recently was awarded the best factual program or series at the Canadian Screen Awards.

As Mikey McBryan says, “Eighty-seven thousand fans can’t be wrong.”

I’d like to give a big shout out to Mikey McBryan for his hard work on the Ice Pilots series. We’re obviously disappointed that that series has come to an end, but we appreciate all of the exposure that the Northwest Territories got under that program.

We need to continue to support the film industry in the Northwest Territories. It’s a good economic driver; it’s a good tourism promotion thing for the Northwest Territories. We look forward to seeing some more awards coming, maybe through Mr. Andrew Stanley and Fur Harvesters of the Northwest Territories and many of the productions that are happening in the Northwest Territories. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. The Member for Hay River South, Mrs. Groenewegen.