Alfred Moses

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m going to follow up with questions to the Minister of Human Resources here. It’s been brought up many times with the vacancies that we have within our government system. I talked to people back home and some of the concerns they bring up is they constantly see a job posting but it never gets a hiring.

I’d like to ask the Minister, for all the GNWT jobs that we have in the Northwest Territories, who writes the job descriptions? Because we’ve also heard with the college students that a lot of these job descriptions ask for two, three, four, five years’ experience. That...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Last month I was able to attend the AGM for the Beaufort-Delta Health and Social Services Authority in Inuvik where a lot of really surprising stats caught my attention in terms of how services are brought forth within that authority, and the hard work that the staff are trying to do moving forward in terms of having to do the best they can with the resources that they receive and the funding that they receive through this government.

Some interesting stats that I’d like to share with committee, the Members here today and Cabinet were in terms of mental health and...

I know that one of our issues and our challenges that we have in the Northwest Territories is resources and infrastructure to house some of these individuals. We are going through the same thing. We also have the long-term care issues. We have an increase in our seniors population, and with that might come dementia and other areas that might require more services.

Does the government have some type of program with out-of-province jurisdictions that provide services to the GNWT? If so, how many NWT residents are accessing those southern placements? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am going to follow up on some of the alarming stats that were presented to us by the health authority in the Beaufort-Delta region on the amount of hours spent on counselling, the amount of no-shows, the referrals, especially the amount of new referrals. There were 699 new referrals to counselling services.

One thing that I have brought up in this House, and I’ll do it again today, is our psychiatric services in terms of assessments. Some of these clients might be going through counselling over and over again without getting the proper assessments they need because we...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I should have been a little bit more clear. I was looking at psychiatric services, out-of-territory services that are provided by other government or other NGOs.

What does the Minister have planned, looking at some of the stats that we have in the Beaufort-Delta? What is his plan, working with the health authority, to address these high, direct counselling services as well as these new referrals that are putting a strain on our current counselling services that we have in the Beaufort-Delta region right now? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I’m glad the Minister brought up the Dalhousie program and gave us a little detail into how that’s working so far.

In terms of doing the assessments and if there are any residents of the NWT or clients that are going through this program that need some treatment for their psychiatric services, how many beds do we have in the Northwest Territories that would be able to house some of these individuals who might need around-the-clock services? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Pan-territorially, Ministers work with other Ministers and other government through Yukon and Nunavut. Yukon has a really great program where they have even more dollars into a very structured film industry.

I am just wondering if the Minister, even though we are embarking on a pilot project, if this is something he can make more stable following some of the best practices we see in the Yukon.

This year alone, we’ve lost some of the episodes and some of the work that Arctic Air came up with that was due here in the Northwest Territories. If anybody has seen Arctic Air...

Thank you, Madam Speaker. In the budget address yesterday, there was mention of a pilot rebate program for the film industry. That’s new to me. It wasn’t brought up when we were going through our main estimates, but it has been a concern for myself, working with people in the film industry. Seeing that there is a pilot rebate program, it kind of shocked me seeing it in the budget address yesterday.

I want to ask the Minister of ITI if he can just elaborate and give us a little bit of detail on this program that’s going to be coming out in this next fiscal year. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Yes, I am referring to all the young leaders that are currently enrolled with the Jane Glassco Northern Fellowship through the Walter & Duncan Gordon Foundation.

Aside from speaking and also speaking at the events and showing events through attending events, does this government offer any type of financial support to this foundation to support our young leaders, specifically here in the Northwest Territories? Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. On January 9th I was fortunate enough to attend an event here in Yellowknife acknowledging nine of our future leaders across northern Canada, of which four were from the Northwest Territories. In fact, one of them works here in the Legislative Assembly.

In 2010 was the launching of the first Jane Glassco Arctic Fellowship Program, which included 12 recipients from across northern Canada.

In January this was the second group that were recipients to the program. This fellowship is aimed at young Northerners, especially Aboriginal Northerners, aged 25 to 35 who want to...