Alfred Moses

I think the concept of having a contest to get Southerners up to our regions in the NWT shows that people are interested in coming up to the North. They had over 4,500 entries just from the Facebook site as well as the radio contest. I didn’t get any statistics on how the TV program showed up.

The active group in Inuvik, the Tourism Stakeholder Committee, is also looking at doing something similar for the Aboriginal Day, Summer Solstice, as well as the Great Northern Arts Festival and our annual reindeer crossing. Would the department look at funding or look at supporting contests of a similar...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have questions today for the Minister of ITI in regards to some of our tourist investments and some of our tourism supports. I mentioned in my Member’s statement the Inuvik Sunrise Festival and the support and interest it got from media campaigns and Facebook. I was just looking at the numbers here, but this very creative group in Inuvik used an organization on Facebook and they garnered over 1,800 contest entries and then on the Rogers Media on the radio show they had over 2,600 entries. So, over 4,500 contest entries to get up to Inuvik to welcome back the sun.

I’d...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. On January 9th to 11th, the community of Inuvik welcomed about 25 out-of-town visitors for the annual Sunrise Festival. I don’t know of any other place in the world that puts that type of events and activities into an event like this where the community is welcoming back the sun after about a month of darkness.

There was about three days of activities and events that were planned in Inuvik. The Town of Inuvik and its partners, organizations and businesses in the community came together and developed a really great three days of events and showcases. I just wanted to...

I agree, not everybody wants to go to treatment, but in some cases not everybody wants the help. But as caring community members, caring families, friends, they see it.

With that, I’ll just lead up into what our current Mental Health Act talks about in terms of, I guess, the substitute consent giver part in here and it’s under the Personal Directives Act. I know that some Members were concerned about the wait times that some community members have to go to treatment, and in some cases the person doesn’t want to go. But under this one act, the Personal Directives Act, it talks about who can...

Just in terms of putting this type of responsibility on the workers in the small communities to now assess what a person is going through, what kind of training are they getting in terms of knowing when to call a medevac or when to admit somebody into a health centre until they get the proper treatment that they do have?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think there’s some good discussion. I’m going to focus mine around the psychiatric nursing unit at Stanton and also just for the whole territory, what kind of psychiatric services we have. It’s also mentioned, there’s a little paragraph that talks about the unit includes beds for withdrawal management. How many beds exactly are in that psychiatric unit and how many are allocated for withdrawal management? Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just want to make a couple comments here. The first one is with the day shelters here in Yellowknife and Inuvik. I just want to talk about the importance of having these in place, especially during the winter months, and that funding. I know funding in Inuvik was supposed to go to the Day Shelter. That money was resituated so that it could into an emergency shelter in the evenings. I know, speaking with some of the board members, they talked about the importance of doing a day shelter now, so we’re looking at both emergency shelters and day shelters.

With the day...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I just want to ask the Minister, how do we promote one of our other big attractions, the Mackenzie River? We can look at possibly providing some kind of package for the Mackenzie River. I’d like to ask the Minister, are we promoting our Mackenzie River expedition?

In regards to the Sunrise Festival, I know the department really does a great job in promoting our northern lights, and we do see that. It’s pretty evident here in Yellowknife when we see all the tourists here. But like I mentioned in my Member’s statement, there’s no other place that I know of in the world that has a celebration of welcoming back the sun. This is huge and I think that it’s something that we can market as well. Also, the Minister had mentioned in his Minister’s statement before about the Oil and Gas Strategy. We know the economy is slow and that oil and gas activity is not...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d also like to welcome Mr. Richard Letourneau. He’s a constituent of Inuvik Boot Lake and I just want to thank him for all the work he does in Inuvik at the school. He’s also with the French society. I hope you enjoy the proceedings today. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.