When the Member raised this before, I clearly take issues of privacy very seriously and I actually had our policy staff as well as legal do an in-depth review of the Health Information Act, and there appears to be a misunderstanding that the changes to the information systems occurred because of system transformation. The fact is there were no changes to the information systems. Whether they are digital systems or non-digital systems, there were not changes to the systems as a result of health transformation. There are changes to systems coming and we are doing the PIAs accordingly as per our terms and conditions.
Mr. Speaker, when the Health Information Act was going through the House, the Information Privacy Commissioner actually had a number of concerns and they focused around the need for policies and training to ensure compliance with the Health Information Act. The need for more public awareness efforts to ensure clients know their rights, the EMR system and its ability to address client consent conditions needs to be clear and understood.
Mr. Speaker, we have moved on all of those recommendations. Additional privacy policies are being developed to address privacy breaches, Privacy Impact Assessments, masking the types of things that need to be done in order to ensure our residents' privacy is protected.
We have training modules that have been conducted throughout the Northwest Territories for staff and we are rolling out more modules all the time and more training to ensure our staff, new staff as well as existing staff, get the appropriate training.
Mr. Speaker, we have over 1,500 brochures that have been distributed and 1,000 notices that have been distributed throughout the Northwest Territories to residents who are accessing our systems. We are working on e-versions of those brochures to get that information out so the information is widely distributed so people know their rights, know when they can say they do not want their information shared.
We are still in the early days, Mr. Speaker, with the Health Information Act, and we can get better and better and better as we go on; and we will.