What does the NWT get from $36M in new federal health funding?

The NWT is getting an extra $36 million from the federal government for health over the next five years, on top of existing agreements.

The two governments announced the cash on Tuesday.

In a world where the NWT spends more than $600 million annually on the health of its residents, what will this money – which works out to around $7 million more per year – do to change things?

Lesa Semmler, the new territorial health minister, said the cash would “enhance what we already know, and what we’ve been doing, to grow programs so that they better meet the needs of our residents.” She acknowledged that any change will be incremental.

Mark Holland, the federal health minister, said: “Will you see improvements right away? Yes. Will it fix all the problems overnight? Absolutely not. That’s not realistic. But what you will see is that line of progress.”

Listen: Hear from the NWT and federal ministers about plans for the new funding on February 14’s edition of Afternoons at the Cabin, 12-3pm each weekday.

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So where will those improvements come?

Not all the specifics are clear, in part because the funding was recently agreed and has not yet been publicly allocated to individual programs and services.

However, the funding is split into two broad chunks:

• $12 million toward the health and care of older people; and
• $24 million toward primary care, mental health and addictions, and recruitment.

We’ll start with the second agreement, the one worth $24 million, which will be paid by the federal government over the next three years.

What will residents see from that?

Staffing, addictions, cultural safety

Semmler said a more efficient healthcare system, with more staff, is a priority,

“We’ve seen the cracks in our system through Covid … and we need to be able to respond to those,” she said at Tuesday’s announcement.

In part, that means more money for the training and recruitment of family doctors. It will also lead to the “establishment of a territorial public health unit to improve planning and support delivery of care,” a federal news release stated.

Semmler, a nurse before she became Inuvik Twin Lakes’ MLA, said the $24 million will also pay for improved cultural safety in healthcare.

“As an Indigenous person from the NWT, as a past healthcare provider and a past MLA, this is one of the topics that I raised over and over again,” she said.

“We need to be able to provide care for our Indigenous population. Those are the people struggling in our communities. When we look at rates of chronic diseases, it is our Indigenous people that are suffering. When we look at a culturally safe healthcare system, we want our Indigenous people to be comfortable accessing this care.”

Semmler also suggested the money will be used to help “small communities [that] don’t have the means to combat this drug crisis we’re seeing across Canada.”

That looks set to mean the establishment of a territorial addictions medicine team and creation of more programs that assist residents affected by alcohol or drug use and provide mental health and suicide prevention supports.

Meeting Elders’ needs

The other agreement, offering $12 million over five years, is designed to help pay for some of the NWT’s existing plan to allow seniors to age in place with dignity.

The federal government said that involves expanding “data-driven, personalized care for continuing care clients,” improving cleanliness and infection prevention in long-term care (plus the establishment of a territorial long-term care housekeeping specialist), and increasing each long-term care resident’s hours of direct care.

“Our Elders, when we’re growing up, they are the centre of our world. We are raised to be able to make sure that they’re respected and they can live in their traditional ways, in their communities, the best that they can,” said Semmler.

The minister said “data-driven, personalized care” referred to assessment tools that “will be able to make sure we can meet those needs of those Elders where they are, in those communities.”

“And when our services cannot – when they exceed that – we provide care as close to home as we can,” she said.

This time last year, when the federal government announced a package of additional healthcare cash for the NWT, then-health minister Julie Green said the support from Ottawa didn’t amount to enough.

Announcing a February 2023 deal worth around $12 million a year more to the GNWT, Green said she and her colleagues had “expressed disappointment” to federal counterparts.

Speaking to the CBC at the time, Green said $12 million “doesn’t represent a very significant portion of our budget.”

This time around, the tone struck by incoming health minister Semmler was different.

“The message I would like anyone to get from this is that any money we’re getting from the federal government that is going to enhance our programs, you know, we’re going to be measuring that and making sure we’re seeing those changes,” she said.

“If we don’t see those changes, we will be hearing that from the Indigenous governments ourselves.”