News & Announcement – Aug 25, 2011-Harper announces health funding for territories

25 August 2011

Territories to split $60 million over two years; midwifery and nurse practitioner positions back on the table

Standing in a hospital desperately in need of more than $200 million in renovations on Thursday, Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced $60 million in health funding to be split between the Yukon, Nunavut and the Northwest Territories over the next two years.

"This will provide the territories with the funding they need until a new (health) accord is arrived at," said Harper.

The GNWT, however, needs money, or the authority to borrow money, for top-to-bottom renovations of Stanton Territorial Hospital. Premier Floyd Roland said the territorial government is still pursuing that funding by lobbying the federal government to grant it a debt-limit increase past its current $575-million cap, which it is less than $100 million away from right now.

Despite the unclear future of the territory's main hospital, all in attendance seemed happy about the funding announcement and the visit from the prime minister.

Midwifery services had been cut back from three midwives across the territory to just two located in Fort Smith earlier this year due to the end of a five-year, $150-million pan-territorial injection of health cash from the federal government. Also, in February there was talk in the legislative assembly about the master of nursing program, which was also funded from the federal money, being cut after this school-year.

Harper's announcement was an extension on that money - deemed the Territorial Health System Sustainability Initiative - and Roland said services like midwifery are now back on the table, as well as additional nurse practitioners and community health nurses for the NWT, development of a territorial chronic disease management strategy, an extension of the dialysis program at Stanton Territorial Hospital to six days a week, planning for a territory-wide endoscopy management system and an anti-smoking campaign targeting residents ages eight to 14.

Weledeh MLA Bob Bromley welcomed the funding, saying the government was "really feeling the pinch" when the previous funding was running out.

As the Canada Health Accord will be re-worked as this funding ends, he said midwifery and nurse practitioners must be worked into the NWT's base funding so they aren't cut when the extra money runs out.

"We need to shift those into our base funding so they're not vulnerable," he said.

Roland said the consequences of not having this funding would have been visible throughout the North.

"If it wasn't extended, we would have to shut a number of programs down and let some of our staff go just as we are starting to see some of the benefits of these programs."