EdinburghNLP/nunavut-hansard-plusplus huggingface dataset:
With the schedule that I have been given by all of you, I haven’t had time to really dedicate any time towards homeless issues, which I am anxious to get into before the winter session. That is the only contribution I can make at this time.
Mr. Elliott: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for those answers.
I appreciate them because I know that is one of the things that I was thinking towards. If there is an increase of the number of people who are actually accessing the homeless shelters, then obviously that is something that needs to be identified and put into the Homelessness Strategy that the minister is alluding to and working on, and as well, probably add to the Anti-Poverty Strategy in terms of what Minister Taptuna’s department is working on.
In regard to the shelters, when we were dealing with Bill 39, it was just, I think, the Oqota Homeless Shelter and now we’ve got two.
There is the added one with the Sivummut House Shelter.
Both of these are located here in Iqaluit.
There are no other shelters in any other community in the territory.
Hon. Keith Peterson: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yes, these two shelters are located here in Iqaluit.
I am unaware of any other shelters in the territory, but I am aware that, for example, in Cambridge Bay, there is a group trying to establish a drop-in shelter for the homeless and I’m aware of it in several other communities in Nunavut as well.
That is why the government is pushing hard to develop this homelessness policy and get some funding so we can really help the homeless across Nunavut.
Chairman: Thank you. Any other questions?
If not, we will go to the Nunavut Housing Corporation. Operations and Maintenance.
Not Previously Authorized. Nunavut Housing Corporation. Total Corporation. $295,000.
Chairman: Total Corporation. Not Previously Authorized. $295,000.
Chairman: Go back to Schedule on page 2. Schedule 1.
Operations and Maintenance. Operations and Maintenance Appropriation. $34,893,000.
Chairman: Now go to Bill 40 in your white legislation binder. Bill 40, Supplementary Appropriation (Operations and Maintenance) Act, No. 3, 2010-2011.
Total Operations and Maintenance. $34,893,000.
Chairman: Total Supplementary Appropriation. $34,893,000.
Chairman: Go back to clause 4. Clause 4.
Chairman: Do you agree to Bill 40 as a whole?
Chairman: Pursuant to Rule 62(2), are you agreed that Bill 40 can now immediately be placed on the orders for third reading?
Chairman: I would like to ask the minister if he has any closing remarks on Bill 40.
Hon. Keith Peterson: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just again thank the members of the committee for their good questions.
We have talked many times about accountability. It’s important.
The Department of Finance will continue to work with all of the departments to ensure that, and we will also continue to work with the Department of Health to improve their tracking systems and budgetary systems.
I appreciate your answers on some of the comments and questions.
Now we will move to Bill 41. I guess there is no change in it. Supplementary Appropriation (Capital) Act, No. 3, 2010-2011.
Bill 41 – Supplementary Appropriation (Capital) Act, No. 3, 2010-2011 – Consideration in Committee
I am pleased to present Bill 41, Supplementary Appropriation (Capital) Act, No. 3, 2010-2011.
Bill 41 is a reduction to the capital appropriation of $15,000 and consists of the following items:
$400,000 to the Department of Finance for Nunavut Arctic College to provide funding for a projected shortfall in the Nunavut Trades Training Centre project;
A reduction of $115,000 to the Department of Finance to correct Nunavut Arctic College’s 2009-2010 to 2010-11 Knowledge Infrastructure Program capital carryover; and
A reduction of $300,000 to the Department of Environment’s Recycling Equipment project to allow a transfer of funds to Vote 1 in order to fund a projected shortfall in the Department of Environment’s operations and maintenance budget.
If there are no general comments, we will go to page 4.
Finance. Capital. Not Previously Authorized.
Centrally Administered Funds. Total Centrally Administered Funds. $285,000.
Chairman: Total Department. Not Previously Authorized. $285,000.
Chairman: We will go on to page 5.
I just was wondering in regard to the recycling program that is being cancelled and some of the infrastructure that was purchased in the communities that they did the test with.
What are they going to with the infrastructure that is there?
I’ll have my colleague, the Minister of Environment, answer that question.
The equipment that is presently in place over the pilot project for the recycling project will stay in place and we will keep it in the location that is now in case this project could be revisited and started up again and be reused.
Is there a dollar value as to how much was spent in terms of the infrastructure dollars that is existing in the communities?
I don’t have that dollar value, but I can tell you that the dollar value of the pilot projects was allocated $400,000 a year from northern strategy funding, but as far as the infrastructure that was purchased, the inventory, I don’t have those figures.
If not, we will go to Environment.
Not Previously Authorized. Program Management. Total Program Management. -$300,000.
Not Previously Authorized. -$300,000.
Schedule 1. Capital. Capital Appropriation. $15,000.
Do you agree? Negative.
Sorry. -$15,000. Do you agree?
Chairman: Go back Bill 41 in your legislation binder.
Bill 41, Supplementary Appropriation (Capital) Act, No. 3, 2010-2011. Clause 1.
Chairman: Go back to Schedule on page 3. Schedule. Supplementary Amounts Appropriated for the Fiscal Year Ending March 31, 2011.
Vote 2: Capital. Total Capital. -$15,000. Do you agree?
Chairman: Total Supplementary Appropriation. -$15,000.
Chairman: Let’s go back to clause 4.
Chairman: Are you agreed to Bill 41 as a whole?  Some Members: Agreed.
Chairman: Are you agreed, pursuant to Rule 62(2), that Bill 41 can immediately be placed on the orders of the day for the third reading?
Chairman: Does the minister have any closing comments on Bill 41?
Hon. Keith Peterson: Again, Mr. Chairman, I thank the members of the committee for their good questions.
We will continue to work hard on accountability and managing our capital.
Chairman: Thank you. We appreciate you for answering the questions here.
Will the Sergeant-at-Arms please escort the minister and witnesses out.
I would now like to ask the Minister responsible for the Department of Health and Social Services, Mr. Curley, to make his opening remarks.
Hon. Tagak Curley: Mr. Chairman, I’m going to request for five minutes break.
We’re trying to retrieve the opening statements.
Chairman: Not a problem.
>>Committee recessed at 17:00 and resumed at 17:11
Chairman: I call order.
I would like to ask the Minister responsible for the Department of Health and Social Services, Mr. Curley, to make his opening remarks.
Bill 35 – Licensed Practical Nurses Act – Consideration in Committee
Hon. Tagak Curley: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’m thankful to all of you for allowing me to pick up my opening comments.
Mr. Chairman, I wish to express my appreciation to the Members of the House for their ongoing support for the creation and introduction of the Licensed Practical Nurses Act.
The Government of Nunavut, through my department, recognizes the need to develop innovative and creative measures to recruit and retain nurses, particularly when there is a shortage of nurses worldwide.
The authority provided in the legislation, Mr. Chairman, to license practical nurses will serve as an influential tool and a positive means of recruiting and retaining this level of health care professional.
Practical nursing is currently the accepted level of nursing immediately below a registered nurse.
The proposed legislation to license practical nurses will bring Nunavut up to par with the rest of the jurisdictions across Canada.
The Licensed Practical Nurses Act will replace the Certified Nursing Assistants Act, which permits the practice of certified nursing assistants – a designation no longer accepted throughout the rest of Canada.
Despite the lack of licensed practical nurses legislation, the registrar of health professions has been requiring that all applicants for certified nursing assistant registration provide evidence that they are eligible to practice as practical nurses.
This legislation, Mr. Chairman, will allow the registrar of health professions to license and regulate the practice of practical nursing in Nunavut.
Mr. Chairman, the bill provides for the following:
Allows for the licensing and use of the title of Licensed Practical Nurse (LPN)
Allows for an appeal of a suspension/cancellation of a licence to practice
Provides for dispute resolution prior to court action
Provides for regulations to prescribe the amount of fees to be paid for licensing
Increases the monetary penalty for practicing practical nursing without a licence
Finally, Mr. Chairman, it allows for the grandfathering of those CNAs currently working in Nunavut who would not qualify under the legislation to become LPNs. They will be able to continue to work in their current positions.
Mr. Chairman, this legislative initiative is in line with the Nunavut Nursing Recruitment and Retention Strategy’s principle to “Promote and support the recruitment of motivated and skilled nursing professionals for Nunavut’s communities.”
I look forward to your support and I welcome questions from the members. (interpretation) Thank you.
To my right is Fred Monpetit. He is the chief nursing officer.
Anne McIntosh is our legal counsel who had drafted this legislation, and we are so grateful to have her here from the Department of Justice.
Chairman: Thank you. Does the Chair of the Standing Committee on Legislation, Mr. Okalik, have comments?
I also wish to thank the minister. Since the minister is of an Inuit background, he sometimes is unable to pronounce the names properly. I believe that the official’s surname is Monpetit, who is sitting next to him.
I note, Mr. Chairman, you also have a history of mispronouncing names and I wanted to point out that most people have trouble with names stemming from a different linguistic background.
I wish to express my gratitude to the minister and his officials for appearing before our committee. Furthermore, this proposed bill has been under review for a period of several months. I wish to thank the minister and his officials for responding to the concerns expressed by my colleagues on the committee.
In particular, with respect to concerns that Nunavummiut can express to the department regarding licensed practical nurses, the bill has opened an opportunity for our residents to be able to submit concerns, issues, or recommendations to the office of the minister.
For that addition, we thank the minister and his officials for resolving the concerns expressed to them by the committee.
Perhaps, in particular, for addressing the targets of this new legislation which the minister was able to speak to in his opening comments, the LPNs who are required to be licensed have to train for four years, but the current target was towards LPNs who had completed a two-year training program.
These LPNs are not registered nurses nor are they medical personnel.
However, it seems that these positions are focussed more on providing assistance to registered nurses in working at elders’ facilities and for assisting people with disabilities.
These positions are highlighted within the proposed bill.
I appreciate that the minister and his officials were able to elaborate further on the intent of the bill, and we are grateful for that clarification.
We also know that the bill should be recommended for passage since it can provide much needed assistance in dealing with the provision of health services.
These were the concerns expressed by my colleagues. Although I did not submit them in written format, I wanted to verbally note these concerns on the record as expressed previously by my colleagues.
Additionally, the members of the committee have the freedom to make more queries to the minister and his officials.
I wanted to reiterate some of the points made by my colleagues in our review of the bill.
Welcome, hon. minister as well as your colleagues here.
Nurses and teachers and all other skills that enhance Nunavut are welcome in Nunavut.
I am pleased to see that there is an initiative in place in order to recruit and retain nurses.
For the record, I am in communication with the health centre, and they have been very open and also very welcoming of other professionals as well in relation to what they do to provide services for the community.
I just want to make a quick statement for the record that any nurses would be welcome to promote and support the recruitment of motivated and skilled nurses in Baker Lake. I just want to state that for the record.
Hon. Tagak Curley: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I don’t believe there was a question there, but we’re certainly grateful for the support.
I can also say, as the minister during the last year and a half, that I have been informed that Baker Lake had one of the longest-serving nurse in charge and who is really very great, you know, really, I think, a role model.
It was even covered by the nursing professional magazine that I read in Nunavut.
I would just like to indicate that I welcome his support. (interpretation) Thank you.
My initial concern when I heard about this particular bill was that the Licensed Practical Nurses Act, when coming into a smaller remote community, would degrade the health services in the remote communities, such as Repulse Bay and Kugaaruk, where these communities are far removed from major, central places where the hospitals specialized are being offered to the people.
I had the pleasure, Mr. Chairman, of having discussed this matter with the minister himself and he was able to clarify the real meaning and intention of this.
In fact, my understanding is that this particular bill would ensure that the registered nurses in the community would spend more time with the patient in the more remote or isolated communities.
So having said that, I will be supporting this bill.
I think it’s got… and potentially down the road, these people who are licensed to practice a practical skill in a community perhaps will just move on to becoming registered nurses in the future.
On page 2 of the opening comments at the top, the minister talks about the practical nurses. “Practical nursing is currently the accepted level of nursing immediately below a registered nurse.” In terms of the distinction between a registered nurse and a practical nurse, is there a difference in pay range as well?
Are they paid at different levels?
I will have Fred Monpetit respond to that.
He certainly is well very involved in that as the chief recruiting and retention officer.
Chairman: Thank you. Mr. Monpetit.
Mr. Monpetit: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
A registered nurse studies four years in university to attain the designation “Registered Nurse.”
A licensed practical nurse studies two years in college.
There is a difference in the pay that they receive.
And while a registered nurse’s salary in the GN collective agreement varies in levels, a licensed practical nurse does make slightly less.
With the program offered at Nunavut Arctic College then, when a graduate comes out of the program, do they come out as a registered nurse or as a practical nurse?
Mr. Monpetit.
Presently the program located in Iqaluit is a program that teaches a four-year degree for registered nurses.
The department is presently in discussions with Nunavut Arctic College to deliver a licensed practical nurse program, which would be a two-year diploma.
On the same page, the minister talked about the legislation allowing a registrar of health professions and that’s in terms of providing licences and also regulating or handling complaints.
Is that person, registrar of health professions, a designation and a PY within your department?
I believe the person in question that we are dealing with is Barbara Harvey.
She’s currently sitting right over there and I think that proves the question and answers the question.
Thank you for that response. It’s nice putting a face to the name because I was hoping to use it as a bit of a learning experience.
I know, at times, we have people coming to us saying that they’re having concerns with nurses and whatnot.
It’s nice to know who to go to and where to pass on the information so it can be handled properly.
The next question I was wanting to ask was in terms of you had mentioned the whole idea of this is to actually, hopefully, add to the retention of nurses and have people coming and working in the communities. To me and looking at the bill and going through it, it seems like it’s also working towards more home care and having care happening in the communities more than having to send people out. Could it cause resistance or is there something in terms of our agency nurses who are coming up now?
Does it mean anything in terms of their contracts and whatnot?
Mr. Chairman, I think that’s a very important question, and certainly I would like to have Fred respond to that question.
Presently, we are in the process of looking at our RFPs for agency nursing.
It would not include licensed practical nursing because they would not fall under the agreement we have with the agencies to provide that service.
At the same time, we look at the bill as a way to retain more nurses and recruit more nurses because, under this present CNA Act that we do have, the Certified Nursing Assistants Act, licensed practical nurses that have been educated and studied in school are not able to do their job. It, in fact, ties their hands and limits the ability of them to practice what they have studied.
So under the Licensed Practical Nurses Act, the licensed practical nursing positions we have would be able to freely practice to the extent that they have studied their education and that would be more rewarding.
Chairman: Thank you. When you finish your statement, maybe you can just say, “Thank you, Mr. Chairman,” that way they will know when to switch the light off and on.
Mr. Elliott: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In terms of an agency nurse who falls under this and is hired and is going through a complaint process, if a complaint is lodged against the person either by a registered nurse that they’re being supervised by or whether it’s a patient who has a concern, I think I’m just asking this question in terms of helping me with my job and directing people to the right places.
Do we have any jurisdiction to correct them under this legislation or any legislation that we have? Is that handled outside through the agency?
Mrs. McIntosh.
Ms. McIntosh: Right now, under this proposed legislation, it would deal with complaints for licensed practical nurses only.
Registered nurses and nurse practitioners are governed by a separate legislation under the Nursing Act between Nunavut and the Northwest Territories, so there’s a whole separate regulatory regime for the registered nurses and nurse practitioners.
It’s a very similar investigation and complaint review process.
We, in fact, modelled the one in this new Act to very much on one that’s in place for the registered nurses and the nurse practitioners.
I think the only other question or concern I had was in terms of the way things are handled once a complaint is brought forward.
It seems like one person has a lot of power in terms of making decisions.
Like you had said, is this the same type of model as other jurisdictions or in other jurisdictions, is there a group of people that, you know, someone has to go before a board or a hearing to have a complaint be heard?
Chairman: Thank you. Ms. McIntosh.
Ms. McIntosh: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
It is somewhat different in other jurisdictions in part because Nunavut has so few practitioners in many of its professions.
It is very difficult to have the kind of self-governing/self-regulating professional bodies that you have in larger jurisdictions where you have many hundreds of nurses and licensed practical nurses. Here, we have a very small number of, certainly, licensed practical nurses at this point, or CNAs, so it would be very difficult for them to have a self-regulating professional body.
So the registrar of health professions takes over that kind of licensing and regulatory role.
That would be done by different organizations in larger jurisdictions.
There is nominally a fair amount of authority in that registrar of health professions but there are also fairly narrow guidelines within which she can operate and within which she can make decisions so that there are protections for the practical nurses that are being governed by her.
Also, on page 2, you talked about “Provides for regulations to prescribe the amount of fees to be paid for licensing.”
I guess my ignorance in terms of the health profession: is this a licensing fee that the nurse pays to become a member of this or to get the licence?
Is it an annual fee and I am assuming like a professional fee they can write off on taxes or is it something that the Government of Nunavut pays for?
The member is correct that this is a yearly licensing fee that is paid to the registrar to maintain their licence in the profession.
Presently with nurses under the collective agreement, we reimburse that cost. However, there are licensed practical nurses that could potentially be practicing outside of the Government of Nunavut and we would not be reimbursing that cost.
Chairman: Thank you. Any other general comments?
On page 2 of the minister’s opening comments, second paragraph, he talked about certified nursing.
“The Licensed Practical Nurse Act will replace the Certified Nursing Assistants Act…” Having recognized that fact, also having recognized that certified nursing assistant registration could, if you want to be eligible to become a practical nurse, my question then, Mr. Chairman is: do we have any idea how many certified nursing assistants we have in the system as we speak?
Mr. Monpetit: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We presently have 37 certified nursing assistants registered with the Office of Professional Practice.
Chairman: Thank you. Mr. Ningark.
Mr. Ningark: Then these specially recognized practitioners will automatically, if you want them, become licensed practical nurses if they wish to.
Mr. Monpetit: Yes, Mr. Chairman, under the present proposed legislation, there is a grandfather clause that would allow any certified nursing assistant a licensed practical nursing licence.
Presently within the territory, there are only two certified nursing assistants who have not completed LPN education programs, Mr. Chairman.
If not, we will go clause-by-clause of the bill starting with page 1. Bill 35, Licensed Practical Nurses Act.
I just had one question under, if I’m in the right spot, the registrar. It says that “The Registrar may establish standards of practice…” under, there are two subsections, (a) and (b).
Are those standards of practice or the standards of competency already created or will they be created?
Ms. McIntosh: Yes, those standards are in the process of being created and Ms. Harvey would be the one to talk best to that.
My understanding is that the standards of practice are pretty much complete.
The standards of competence are much more detailed, and actually Mr. Monpetit might want to speak to that. They are much more detailed, actual procedural aspects of practice and are in the process of being developed.
At the present time, we have looked to maintain the broadest scope of clinical competency possible for licensed practical nurses. We have always looked to our nurses to provide much greater service than we expect of our southern counterparts in nursing, and the licensed practical nurses would have no different... it would be a very broad competency profile at this present time.
Thank you for those answers. Will they be completed before this Act comes into force?
Ms. McIntosh: Yes, obviously, the coming into force date could be set by cabinet. So, definitely, all of the regulations and all of the standards will need to be ready before the legislation is actually put in place.
We will go back to clause 8.
Chairman: Clause 12. Agreed?
Under this clause, it talks about emergencies in terms of emergency nursing services.