Alfred Moses

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In a follow-up to questions on my Member’s statement earlier on prescription drugs and the misuse and possibly the over-prescribing of, more specifically, pain killers, I would like to ask the Minister of Health and Social Services, what is the Minister doing to address the over-prescribing of pain killers and the misuse of prescribed drugs? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. On many occasions I have stood up in this House and spoke on the crisis of mental health and addictions in the Northwest Territories. However, today I will speak to one that tends to get overlooked on far too many times and that’s dealing with prescription drug use, specifically pain killers.

Pain killers are very effective in treating acute pain and chronic pain and pain near the end of life. However, these pain killers can be highly addictive and easily misused and can be fatal at high doses or when combined with alcohol or other sedating drugs. This really affects not...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I think one of the main things is with the data collection monitoring, with the monitoring system, what kind of data collection will we have on file and how will that be used to develop future strategic plans, and will there be a data component in place and will it include not only drug misuse and over-prescribing but also stats that are related to overdose of prescription drugs? Thank you.

Thank you. That was a really good update. I thank the Minister for all the information that he provided. He did mention that under Section 65 of the Health Information Act, which is slowly coming out and developing that monitoring program, I’m assuming that we can’t get that monitoring program until the Health Information Act comes into play here.

Is there anything that we can do to monitor any prescription or prescription drugs in the meantime until the Health Information Act gets ascent? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

III.

1.

Conduct a thorough review of required resources

When the Child and Family Services Act came into force in 1998, the department set funding levels without assessing what resources would be required to fulfill its statutory obligations. Since 1998 the department has never done a comprehensive assessment of this kind. When asked by the Auditor General’s team to provide a rationale for the 1998 funding levels, the department was unable to do so.

The 2000 report by the Child Welfare League recommended that the department rationalize the allocation of resources...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. On March 27, 2014, employees who are members of the Union of Northern Workers received a notice regarding the 2014-2015 northern living allowance rates that were going to be implemented on April 1st. In that message that they got the notice there was a link showing which communities increased and which ones decreased. As a result, we had numerous communities across the Northwest Territories who are employees of the GNWT decrease in the amount of northern living allowance, one of them being my community of Inuvik. Employees ended up losing about $383 at the end of the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I wish to report to the Assembly that the Standing Committee on Social Programs has completed its review of Bill 24, An Act to Amend the Student Financial Assistance Act. The committee wishes to report that Bill 24 is ready for consideration in Committee of the Whole. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I want to speak to the community of Inuvik and the decrease in $383. Although it’s lower than most of the other communities that decreased, coming from Inuvik, we know the utilities are a lot higher than what they were in previous years and that $383 does help out the middle-income family. That’s two weeks of groceries right there, or even paying utilities. We’ve got residents who are going on payment plans to pay utilities, yet we are decreasing the northern living allowance in those communities. I did ask the Minister why this was not red flagged and not agree until something could be...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are for the Minister of Human Resources. It’s going to reflect on the Member’s statement I made earlier in terms of the northern living allowance. I’d like to ask the Minister, first and foremost, the question that we know that negotiations between the GNWT and the Union of Northern Workers is done on an annual basis, and whether or not the negotiations are positive or negative or they’re even concluded to, so I want to ask the Minister of Human Resources if the northern living allowance rates for the 2014-2015 year were not agreed to, would the rates...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to ask the Minister whether or not there is anything this government can do right now to go back to the table and renegotiate the rights that came out of the 2014-2015 northern living allowances in Inuvik. The $383 decrease did bring a lot of people’s concerns forward to my office. I know that’s only $383 and there are smaller communities with higher decreases. I can’t imagine what they’re going through right now.

Is there anything we can do to go back to the table and revisit this, renegotiate the 2014-2015 northern living allowance rates of the Northwest...