Debates of Feb. 6th, 2026

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll try and be brief. I am very excited about the 24/7 model of the laboratory and diagnostic imaging services for Stanton that has been announced in this budget. It appears that 21 new positions will be established to support that model.

Can the Minister elaborate as to how that model will run and whether or not positions will be difficult to recruit and retain? I know that having such a service is very important to many of my constituents, and I know they would want to see it succeed. We have difficulty with retention sometimes in health care, so I'd love to hear the Minister's thoughts on that. Thank you.

Thank you, Member of Great Slave. To the Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The important piece around this laboratory and expansion, x-ray expansion in the budget, is related to many of the issues that we have heard from, you know, from town halls, heard from residents through BFs, through MLAs, through other Ministers bringing their concerns to my office, as well as my own constituents. As you know that the Stanton -- you know, the positions will be, you know, put into the territorial -- Stanton Territorial Hospital but the Stanton Territorial Hospital, as I say, is a territorial support for the entire territory.

So it's really important that -- that when we -- currently, we have a seven and a half hour, you know, with extended hours and flex -- you know, sometimes they flex and most of the time it's overtime. We do not have enough positions to run a 24-hour but yet we need a 24-hour because we know that our hospital is gridlocked, our ICU is always full, our emergency department is always full, and therefore patients need to move. And usually the things that are holding up, you know, making sure that they're being diagnosed properly or tended to properly is blood work, is x-rays, is CT scans, is those types of things.

And where we were also spending a lot of money is sending a lot of the tests out of territory. And so where another part of it is is that we had to increase our -- like, we couldn't keep putting more and more on this current staffing levels that we had. And we heard that from the staff, that we had to increase the staff so that way when all of the blood work is coming in from all of the communities in the territory that that is being serviced and it's being actioned all the time. So there's always somebody working in the lab. There's always somebody drawing blood. There's always somebody there to be able to x-ray. So this is why it's so important that, you know, we take this -- we recognize that this is a territorial initiative. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister. Member of Great Slave.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. And apologies if I wasn't clear. My interest is in what the Minister and her department and the authority, I suppose, will do to retain these positions. I assume not everybody wants to work the midnight shift at the lab, although it -- as the Minister has demonstrated in her last response, it is very important and it is very needed for everyone in the territory. So is there a plan in place to make sure that once we have recruited these positions, what retention looks like. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Member of Great Slave. Minister.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, the conversations that I've had with NTHSSA, as this is the operational arm of the health, they have stated to us that these types of positions right now that they are -- they can pretty much say that they are able to recruit these positions, especially at the territorial hospital. And so what we have done, you know, and I think is that we've asked them to start to look at it, to be able to start that operationally and look as to what it looks like. And as some of -- under the direction of myself is to -- because NTHSSA, you know, they create their budgets, they can reallocate as needed, they have been ramping up these efforts and looking and recruiting in to bringing on extra staffing, which is already showing results. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Minister. Member of Great Slave.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. And I don't know how to restate it, but I am curious if there are any retention measures that are also being considered by NTHSSA for this new 24/7 model. Thank you.

Thank you, Member of Great Slave. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, they would follow our collective agreement if they are eligible for whatever's under the collective agreement as well as the current things that we have within the health authority to support and retain through our previous recruitment initiatives. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Minister. Member of Great Slave.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll put that one down for the moment.

Can the Minister describe the role of the newly proposed nurse case manager positions for medical travel, the medical travel case management initiative, how -- I recognize, I think -- I believe it's three positions are being added for this new initiative. Does the Minister feel that three positions are adequate, enough people to suss through all of the various longstanding issuing with medical travel that is discussed in this House every single session? Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Member of Great Slave. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. As this is through hospital services and that will be within the health authority, I know that is another section, and I -- I mean, high levelly, these three positions, it is a pilot over the next couple of years, is this is what we're trying to do. We don't want to create something that is not working but we also want to be flexible to put -- what we've heard from many residents that are travelling is that travel is not coordinated, it comes in, nobody's coordinating the travel, people are travelling out, and then they have to come back, and then they're travelling out a week later or even sometimes at the end of the week.

And this is -- we have to look at ways and we have to have people in there that can manage that and can case manage all of our travel. And so there's -- we currently, within the health authority, under medical travel, that administer the medical travel, they have teams. And so one of these case managers will be assigned to each of those teams to ensure that when patients are -- you know, we have many locums, many physicians, locums, nurses that are coming in that are -- you know, that are terms that may not know our system, and so sometimes they'll put in a medical travel when it's not necessary. Or administrative staff might get a referral that says that somebody needs a follow-up but that follow-up could actually be done in the territory or virtually. That's what this is going to do. And over the next couple of years, if these positions are in the budget, moving forward, then we will be able to track and manage how they are supporting their unit. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister. I just want to share a reminder by our interpreters requesting Members to slow down. So if we can all be mindful of our interpretation staff.

Thank you, Minister. And we will go back to the Member. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I hope I am being slow enough. I will try.

I think my last question, as my time is running out is -- and I want to thank the Minister for that answer, and I want to thank her and her staff for identifying that indeed there is oversight needed on medical travel, and I think this initiative is a good idea.

Can the Minister please tell me if these new positions, and indeed this work of this initiative, will more fully dovetail with the medical travel approach of the -- for GNWT employees. There seems to be some disparate pieces between the two and how they're handled. I think if -- no matter where you're employed or if you're employed within the NWT, you should be receiving the same level of service for medical travel. Is there any contemplation around a bigger wholesale review of medical travel case management in that perspective? Maybe not for these positions, but in general. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Member of Great Slave. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I believe -- and I can -- I believe within medical travel, whether you're with any other insurance that -- if it's GNWT that's paying for your travel out of territory, this is prior to that. So this is going to be the case management to say whether or not this travel can be done in your home community, is it urgent, does it need to be done right now, is there a need that -- you know, that we could, you know, actually book it because you have another appointment coming up, you know, it's -- so that is what that is before it goes to who's paying for the medical travel. So I believe that that's within the system. And then once it's deemed that they need to travel, that's when it would be referred to -- because I believe GNWT doesn't get the information as to why the person is travelling. They just get to know that it's been approved for travel.

Thank you, Minister. We will now move on to the Yellowknife North Member, and afterwards, if the Mackenzie Delta Member returns, he will be going afterwards. Please go ahead there, Yellowknife North Member.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So just to continue along my previous line of questions and also to build upon the questions of my colleague from Great Slave, so we see in the business plan that employee turnover rates between 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 actually got a bit worse. They've been pretty stable but got slightly worse, and employee turnover is about 15 percent. I know the Minister has referred to a new people strategy that we can expect to see soon, but we have been talking about staff recruitment -- sorry, especially staff retention over the last two years and as far as we can tell, we don't see that there's been any improvement. So can the Minister point or assure us that there's actually going to be new approaches that will turn this around and change something in terms of employee turnover coming soon? Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Member of Yellowknife North. Please go ahead there, Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. And I appreciate this question. I know that within the health and social services area, it is -- you know, and I -- we struggle to retain healthcare workers. You know, I mean, of all of the reasons that we talk about in this House, you know, the cost of living, the -- you know, and there's -- we have childcare issues. There's many different reasons why. However, there's things that are -- we're restrained by within the public service that we can provide to staff, and I think that's the issue right now that we're dealing with. It's the things that the staff that have raised that if we -- you know, that we struggle that we -- within being public service against collective agreements and things like that that we are -- so what we are trying to do is we are trying to stay within the area that we can support, and we're going to continue with the things that we have had but there are -- with the people strategy coming out, there is going to be new things, and there's going to be things that we may have to relook at our -- like, health and social services has to relook at their budget. And I think this comes along with the health sustainability unit. And the work that they're doing is as a health and social services system, we need to retain our staff and provide programming, but right now we're already struggling to do that within the budget that we have. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Minister. Back to the Member of Yellowknife North.