EdinburghNLP/nunavut-hansard-plusplus huggingface dataset:
We are always developing new curriculum.
I looked into the statement that we are discussing and I couldn’t find exactly what that person was talking about.
The Department of Education’s Curriculum Division developed a significant number of the Inuit language and IQ materials for use in Nunavut’s schools.
Can the minister clarify whether these materials been assessed and evaluated and, if so, why are they not being used in Nunavut’s schools?
As I stated earlier, we develop many curricula in addition to curricula from outside of Nunavut that we have adapted to make the materials relevant to Nunavut.
We create a lot of course materials and we also receive instructional materials that may be of interest to us from many other places.
Curriculum used in our schools has to be relevant to Nunavut. We study the materials and make sure that they apply to Nunavut before they are even put into the classrooms. We can’t just receive curriculum anywhere and then introduce them in our schools right away.
We can’t do that. We try to make it so what we receive fits into our present programming. We carefully look at them to make sure that they apply to what is being taught in the schools.
Our education system is based on the Alberta (interpretation ends) curriculum, (interpretation) so we also receive educational materials from them.
We’ve had to come up with agreements whenever they produce new instructional materials that we are required to use.
I can even say that last year I met with my fellow ministers of education from the NWT and Alberta and we came up with an agreement so that Nunavummiut can be involved when Alberta is developing new materials that will affect Nunavut.
We are now a part of the group that first sees what is being produced, we provide input into what we will have to deliver, and this has been in place since last year. I can say that a lot education materials are provided to us, and then we adapt them so that they are relevant to Nunavut.
I also thank the minister for his response, which makes me want to understand more about how the curriculum can be set up better and how long it takes for these curriculum materials to be introduced into the classrooms.
My final question is: can the minister clearly describe his department’s current direction with respect to developing Inuit language curriculum for all school grades in Nunavut?
Education is something we consider very important to our government, and I always love to hear about people interested in education.
The Inuktitut language instruction, which is called (interpretation ends) Inuktitut Language Arts, (interpretation) is what we use.
As I stated earlier, we have been developing Inuktitut learning materials from kindergarten to grade 6.
This will be actual Inuktitut language instruction in the classroom.
We are now working on it for the higher grades.
We’re trying to create material all the way up to grade 12 and that is our ultimate goal.
Right now the material from kindergarten to grade 6 was implemented in 2016-17, and then in 2017-18 the Inuktitut curriculum for grades 7 to 9 will be done.
Inuktitut language material will be implemented to be used in the classrooms at that time.
We are continuing this work.
I am very proud of what has been done along these lines because the Inuktitut language should be used in the classrooms and it is being used in the classrooms.
That’s what I wanted to tell you.
Question 740 – 4(3): Addressing Problems with Health Care Services (Shooyook)
Mr. Speaker, I am concerned about the lack of follow-up when an individual who is sick seeks medical attention.
We have to go to the local health centres and health care is an important matter.
With that being the situation in our territory and with the importance of our health care system, at times our residents who are sick enough to seek medical attention are treated by nurses callously and are only asked a few generic questions. Their symptoms are not checked and they receive no diagnosis.
The only reason people go to health centres is because they can feel their bodily pain. More weight needs to be placed by our nurses on residents’ medical complaints when they say they are not well.
As that is the case today, what steps will be taken to make improvements to ensure people who really are sick are not treated like people with a cold and then given Tylenol?
The sick person is not even provided an appointment for follow-up.
With that being the case, many people are dying. If nurses performed proper medical diagnoses based on the patients’ described pain, these people would have most likely returned to good health.
Can the minister clearly explain what a person should do if they feel that their health complaint has not been addressed by medical staff?
I recall that there is a process for submitting complaints, but I wonder if it can include issues like this.
It still hasn’t been set up to receive medical complaints of this nature.
I ask the minister: can he provide an explanation about the process for complaints?
I’m sure I’ll be answering questions similar from the member’s statement earlier, but maybe I’ll be able to cover part of it here.
We’re in the process of finalizing our health professional recruitment strategy. Part of that is associated with a delay, if you want to call it that, as we want to make sure it’s coinciding and correlating with our model of care review that is undergoing right now, that is almost complete.
Whenever somebody goes to a health centre, the ideal intent is for the health care professional to make sure they look after the client’s and patient’s needs appropriately right off the bat.
One of the concerns that the member raises is due to lack of indeterminate nurses across the territory, especially in some of the communities where you get to know the patients, you get to know the population, and they get to know the health care professionals that are in the community.
Our goal is to provide more indeterminate nurses to be able to bring that familiarity on a more consistent basis.
That being said, I do stress and I’ll continue to stress that our health care professionals are, in general, doing a very good job.
I get a lot of letters of support from a number of communities on the good work that is being done out there. Are there gaps?
That’s where I’m anticipating the model of care review to be able to help guide us and guide our health care professionals in the expectations of providing health care in Nunavut, which is different than almost any other jurisdiction in Canada.
We rely a lot more upon our health care professionals, especially nurses, than other jurisdictions do.
That being said, there is an Office of Patient Relations that is set up and is taking calls, emails, and concerns and will address specific circumstances.
I know my deputy minister has rolled out again our Tylenol protocol to make sure that people aren’t just given Tylenol and sent home, unless that is the medical need of that individual.
There are processes that are in place and there are anticipated improvements coming through our model of care review and through our health professional recruitment strategy.
Mr. Shooyook (interpretation): Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I also thank the minister for clarifying the process.
I do understand what the minister is saying, but sometimes when a nurse has a lot of training, it too can create the opposite intention as they may downplay the person’s medical pain.
This obvious disregard of health complaints, as if people are hypochondriacs, must stop.
When people who are attuned to their bodies feel pain, they approach their local health centre.
Our minister needs to be aware of that.
I do understand that there is an Office of Patient Relations and that individuals can contact that office with their concerns. However, it seems that when people call that office, they are simply told to contact another office and nothing gets done.
Can the minister clearly explain what rights a person has to get another opinion from a different health care worker if they feel that their illness or health problem has not been addressed?
What can the minister put in place to ensure that the patient relations office improves their effectiveness that it lacks today?
Can he clarify that for me?
When we are talking about the patient relations office, again, I hear a number of good things that they’re doing.
Their role in the engagement process is to help the patient navigate through the health care system. They shouldn’t be directing them to another person without some clear hand-off to make sure that the patient’s needs are addressed.
Again I go back to, and I have said it here before, at the end of the day we know our bodies. When we go to a health centre and we are feeling ill and we know there is something wrong, be persistent.
If you feel you are not getting your situation addressed appropriately, contact the patient relations office.
If you’re still not feeling satisfied, contact one of us who represents the population of the territory in our communities.
In doing so, almost every day I get issues brought to me by my colleagues around this room. I am sure every one of you can attest that I take those issues very seriously and I work very hard to find a solution that is appropriate to the situation.
At the end of the day I can’t say yes to everything.
I do have a finite amount of money and resources available, but I can assure you and I’m sure that members will agree that I do work very hard to make sure that situations are resolved as best they can be.
Even though that may be the case, I know that it is a challenge.
Mr. Speaker, as we move forward, it is important that our health system can respond to the needs of the people of Nunavut.
Will the minister commit to improving the complaint process so that people can request and receive a follow-up health service when they feel that their first request has not been met?
Personal pain or illness is important, which is why we keep reiterating these incidents, Mr. Speaker.
Just recently a person in our community suffered a foot injury due to an accident where the person fractured bones in their foot. When that person called the health centre, after just being in an accident, they were told to drop in the next day. This seems so unprofessional to witness when a person has just survived an accident and has suffered bone fractures.
It is very painful to have a bone fracture of any sort.
Will this minister and his department never treat our people with bone injuries as emergencies?
Despite the importance of these injuries, our people are told to come back tomorrow. This is unacceptable in Nunavut.
It is evident that this has happened in other places.
If the health care professionals were more compassionate, they would treat all medical calls. Improvements can be made in these areas to ensure they are treated as emergency cases.
Where other emergencies exist, it is understandable to treat priority cases first, but any bone injury is a medically critical situation.
I wonder where you and your department can make improvements to ensure this doesn’t occur again.
While I can’t address the specific incident that the member has raised as an example, I can assure the member, all members, and everyone watching and listening that there have been protocols put in place in the community health centres.
If somebody calls in after-hours and requests a visit to the health professional, but if they’re declined and they still feel that there is a need, there is a secondary option to call the nurse in charge of that health centre.
Failure in that, there’s again still the regional office or the patient relations office that can be dealt with right away.
It’s never good to hear of a scenario where somebody has a serious injury where it wasn’t dealt with immediately, and I have the utmost respect for people who get put into situations where they’ve had to advocate a little bit harder than they feel they should have.
I do want to stress that, again, it goes back to having more indeterminate, longer-term nurse employees or health care professionals in our communities that know the residents.
I don’t go to the doctor on a whim. Usually something has got to be broken or bleeding for me to go in.
I would like to think that I would get seen because I’m not somebody who goes in all the time.
That being said, when you feel your needs aren’t being addressed, you have to continue to advocate for yourself.
We all have constituents that we have helped advocate through the system and I continue to support my colleagues however I can in making sure that their constituents’ needs are addressed.
Question 741 – 4(3): Public Service Management (Angnakak)
My questions are for the Minister of Finance and they relate to some of the themes that emerged during questions asked yesterday by my colleague from South Baffin.
The Government of Nunavut’s most recent quarterly employment report indicates that there are a total of 166 senior management positions in the public service, of which 136 positions are currently filled.
Twenty of these positions are filled by Nunavut Inuit and 116 are filled by non-Inuit.
However, these quarterly reports do not indicate if the filled positions are occupied by indeterminate employees, term employees, casual employees, contractors, or employees who are doing the job in an acting capacity.
Can the minister provide a breakdown for these senior management positions?
Hon. Keith Peterson: Mr. Speaker, for the level of detail that Ms. Angnakak seeks, I would have to come here with several binders. Mr. Speaker, I can’t conceivably provide that level of detail to such a question given 20 seconds to respond to a question like that.
If Ms. Angnakak wants the information, I would suggest a written question and we can provide that level of detail.
I sort of anticipated I might get an answer like that, but I thought it was worth a try.
Perhaps a written question would be a good way to go.
Mr. Speaker, the government recently engaged a headhunting firm called the Phelpsgroup - I think that’s how you say it - to recruit people to fill senior positions in the public service.
Can the minister tell us who has been appointed to senior GN positions in recent months as a result of this recruitment effort?
I believe the initiative that Ms. Angnakak is referring to was more of an effort by the Government of Nunavut to identify potential candidates across Nunavut who may be interested in senior management within the government.
I don’t believe we have actually appointed anybody, at least certainly not to the level of my colleagues, a director level and higher, that I’m aware of.
We were trying to identify individuals who are interested in working for the government or advancement in the government.
As we discussed during the recent winter sitting, there is not enough time obviously remaining in the life of this current Legislative Assembly to establish a new public service commission.
However, I did appreciate the minister’s recent willingness to look at this issue seriously and send some of his staff to study models in other jurisdictions.
Can the minister confirm if his department is continuing to prepare materials for the next government to review on this issue?
Yes, my department has gathered, collected, and researched a tremendous amount of information on public service commissions across Canada and different models.
I forget the name of the program review or study, but we have engaged a consultant who is also looking at public service commissions or how to tailor our own existing public service into a delivery model that would accommodate all the concerns that we’re hearing across Nunavut.
I’m sure in our transition planning coordinated by the Premier’s Office, Executive and Intergovernmental Affairs, we will do transition planning for different departments, prepare a number of binders and other important key initiatives and issues so that when the new government is sworn in, they will immediately know what the issues are and what they should possibly look at going forward when they’re sworn in.
Question 742 – 4(3): Hudson Bay Neighbours Regional Roundtable (Sammurtok, T)
(interpretation ends) As the minister will recall, the most recent meeting of the Hudson Bay Neighbours Regional Roundtable took place in late March.
Can the minister update the House today on what discussions and decisions took place at this meeting?
I thank the member for giving me the chance to update Nunavut on the meetings that we had at the Hudson Bay roundtable in Winnipeg. The meetings were productive, I believe. Resolutions were made and there was a lot of talk about the hydro line from Manitoba to the Kivalliq and also the road from Manitoba to the Kivalliq.
In part of the discussions, KIA had agreed to put in a proposal to get federal funding to do a detailed feasibility study on the cost and routing of the hydro line and the road to Nunavut from Manitoba to the Kivalliq.
Mr. Tom Sammurtok (interpretation): Thank you, Mr. Speaker. (interpretation ends) During our recent winter sitting I again raised the issue of the proposed winter road between Manitoba and the Kivalliq.
Can the minister indicate what the new Manitoba government’s position is on this project?
I can’t speak for the Manitoba government, but at the time of the meetings Manitoba’s position was very unclear as they had just formed the government and their budget was coming out.
I can’t answer the question on Manitoba’s position on the winter road.
On April 7, 2017 the Minister of Community and Government Services testified before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance on the occasion of its televised hearing on the subject of economic development in the north.
Can the minister indicate what support we have received from federal decision-makers concerning the proposed winter road between Manitoba and the Kivalliq?
The winter road from Manitoba to the Kivalliq is a part of this government’s four steps, but there were no commitments from the federal government at that time when we were at the standing committee hearings.
Question 743 – 4(3): Inadequate Staffing at Community Health Centres (Mapsalak)
(interpretation ends) Mr. Speaker, in my member’s statement, I noted that the community of Naujaat currently has only one full-time indeterminate nurse at the health centre.
Can the minister clearly explain why it is so difficult for his department to hire full-time nurses to work in Nunavut’s community health centres?
As I have talked more than once in this House on the difficulty that almost all jurisdictions in Canada have with nursing recruitment, there are additional challenges for hiring in Nunavut itself. I did want to take this opportunity to update the member that it may not be as difficult as we’re laying it out to be, as I’ve got three indeterminate nurses that are going to be starting in Naujaat in the very near future.
Mr. Mapsalak (interpretation): Thank you, Mr. Speaker. (interpretation ends) Recently I was very concerned to hear about a young person in the community who was having epileptic seizures and the nurse on call indicated that they did not have the training or experience to deal with this condition.
Can the minister describe how his department ensures that casual or temporary nurses have the appropriate levels of training and certification to work in the community health centres across Nunavut?
Hon. George Hickes: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate the member’s question.
As I stated earlier, there are challenges with recruiting nurses in Nunavut; one of the main reasons being the higher level of skills that are needed to work in a community health centre, where you are the last line of defence in some respects for hands-on.
We do have opportunities through telehealth and through calling other health professionals or specialists.
That being said, when you’re a nurse in a community, you are the first and only option for immediate health care delivery.
One of the things that we’re looking at in our health professional recruitment strategy is maintaining and improving orientation, training and development, respect in the workplace training, performance management to make sure that skills or gaps are identified as soon as possible, identifying leadership skills for nurses in charge, and specifically health and safety.
With our model of care review and our health professional recruitment strategy, we’re looking at making dramatic improvements on the issues that the member raises.
I can assure all members that any nurse that is working in the territory is certified and licensed through RNANT/NU, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut nurses union, to make sure that they are qualified.
Again, the diverse skill set needed to be a nurse in Nunavut is challenging and I commend our health professionals for the great work that they do. To the member’s specific incident, I know we have talked about it briefly in the past and it’s something that we will continue to make sure that as we recruit nurses, they’re able to fulfill all skills needed to provide health care delivery in Nunavut.
It’s a very serious concern and I’m sure you would be just as perplexed as me with a nurse indicating that they don’t have the training.
(interpretation ends) Mr. Speaker, the current staffing situation at the Naujaat Health Centre makes it very difficult for both the community and the health centre staff.
Will the minister commit to filling health care staff positions with full-time indeterminate nurses as a priority?
Hon. George Hickes: Yes, Mr. Speaker. Three of them, Mr. Speaker.
Question 744 – 4(3): Implementation of Medical Travel Policies (Akoak)
Mr. Speaker, it has been brought to my attention that the government’s Medical Travel Policy and the policy for escorts for medical clients are not always applied equally or fairly.
Mr. Speaker, on the one hand, we have patients who are told that after a procedure, they must not lift anything heavy like their suitcase or, if they are a breastfeeding mother, their infant child, yet they are denied an escort to assist them during their recovery.
On the other hand, we have medical clients being authorized to travel for extra days away to give them time to do some shopping.
Can the minister clearly explain how his department ensures that the Medical Travel Policy meets the real needs of Nunavummiut and is applied fairly across the board?
I do understand the member’s opinion and public perception that some people get additional services or special treatment, but I can assure the member that I know myself and officials in my department take medical travel very seriously.
It is the largest expenditure that we expend our limited resources on. I appeared in this House last session to get supplementary appropriation for increased costs that we utilize for medical travel.
One thing that people don’t realize is that the person sitting next to you may have different medical needs that may mandate them to have an escort. Where there are services that are provided that are contracted out, I understand and I truly wish I had that blank cheque that I could send everybody out with an escort.
When I looked at some of the numbers in the member’s community, 50 percent of the medical travel in the month of May, last month, had an escort associated with it, which is higher than some of the communities and lower than some of the communities.
It’s on a case-by-case basis that medical travel is dictated. We work very hard. We just completed a review of our medical travel.
There is another phase to that review. We have streamlined a lot of the processes and made sure that we are conforming to our travel.
Where the member brings the comment that people stay down for shopping on extended visits, on occasions those are allowed but not at the Department of Health’s expense.
If I was to be travelling for medical travel and I was scheduled to come back tomorrow, if I wanted to wait until Sunday, I would have to find my own accommodations, I would have to pay for my return ticket and claim those expenses upon my return.
Medical travel will not book extensions to the travel. They will not pay for those extensions in travel or any of the accommodations or per diems associated with that.