Alfred Moses

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As much as I’d like to do a rebuttal to the Member’s statement, and the importance… Actually, I will.

This government is focused on increasing the health and the wellness of people across the Northwest Territories. As a fact, increasing our economy, increasing our skill force, increasing our education and our health care systems in the regions through the Northwest Territories, and I believe this government’s been doing a great job in decentralizing the jobs in the communities, bringing families to communities. In Inuvik alone I know that the opening of a couple offices...

I just have a couple things. One was the departments, whether they have been giving input in terms of the increased population plan that this government is going ahead with and whether or not there will be jobs available, should we have an increase in the population. There were also questions on recruitment and what the department is doing in terms of attending career fairs throughout the Northwest Territories and also looking at recruiting some of our students that are in post-secondary programs down south.

Just making reference to budget dialogue from 2012, there was recommendation in terms...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We talked about the Mental Health Act and post-traumatic stress disorder. So I just want to ask the Minister – I know we’re going through a review of one of the bills – under one of the provisions in the Mental Health Act it talks about involuntary admission. Sometimes when a person who has mental illness doesn’t want to admit themselves, they have people they work with that care about them.

Are there any amendments being made that we can make right now to the Mental Health Act that can address these issues? Thank you.

Thank you. In some cases just talking about mental illness is a tough thing to do for anybody, even if you are a doctor and understand the situation, to bring up the issues and the symptoms that you’re dealing with. Particularly in the North because we have such a small population there’s a good chance that if you end up in an event you might know the person and that can really cause really high stress and make you more vulnerable to PTSD.

I’d like to ask the Minister, other than what he’s said now, how are we getting that information out to these first respondents as well as to the doctors and...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It’s usual for people who have the experience from traumatic events in their lives to have flashbacks, nightmares or intrusive memories when something terrible happens. What I’m talking about is post-traumatic stress disorder, also referred to as PTSD. It is a mental illness that affects a lot of people. It doesn’t matter which demographic you’re in, it affects people all over the world. It’s exposure to trauma that might be involved in death or a threat of death; it could be a serious injury, an accident, violence, natural disasters, even crime.

There are various...

Thank you, Madam Chair. My time is up.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’d just like to welcome the Minister and his staff for joining us today. It’s kind of neat, mainly because this is our last budget for the 17th Assembly, and I know the Minister and his staff have appeared before standing committee on numerous occasions and we’ve had some pretty good dialogue in terms of how this department is managing its action plan but also getting some good input and advice from committee members.

I have a few things that I’d like to try to address here, and I’ll try to get it all summarized as my general comments and that way when we go into detail...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Last week I went to World Cancer Day, and talking to some of the individuals, they have a speaking forum, or a talking circle group here in Yellowknife, which is a great way to talk about it. So I was wondering if the Minister has any resources available that he can set up some type of forum for our first responders that want to get together and talk about these kinds of issues.

Are there any resources in the operations budget or any resources that he can think of that we can address this in a talking circle forum? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In my Member’s statement I talked about what kind of services we have in terms of supporting some of our first responder service providers in the Northwest Territories, who, I must say, are identified as having some of the highest rates of post-traumatic stress disorder. These are our firefighters, our doctors, our nurses, RCMP. My question is for the Minister of Health and Social Services.

What is our government and the department doing in terms of reaching out to these service providers and making sure that they do have the supports should they need them?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My last question is, over the years the cost of doing business continues to increase, so when we have these policies and programs in place since 2008, obviously in our government we handle the forced growth situation department by department.

Is there something in some of these grants that will allow these small businesses to reflect the forced growth that they see in their businesses? Is there some type of program with the SEED or other grants and contributions that we have? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.