Alfred Moses

The Minister mentioned that for different reasons jobs are vacant and the money is used for other areas.

With some of the challenges that we have within our departments possibly filling the position, would the Minister agree or would the Minister allude to our positions within some of our departments deliberately left vacant so dollars could be used for other areas. Can the Minister please confirm or allude to that question?

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, 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...

I would like to ask the Premier, in the first launch of this program, there were 12 discussion papers that were brought forth. I believe four of them were in the Northwest Territories; however, we have jurisdictional issues, northern challenges we face right across northern Canada.

Does the Premier or any of his Cabinet look at these research papers, look at the recommendations and act on the recommendations? As I mentioned earlier, they focus on things like climate change, land stewardship, education, health, a lot of these pressing issues that face northern people. Does the Premier and his...

Thank you, Madam Speaker. We are going to follow up to my Member’s statement. I would like to ask the Premier of the Government of the Northwest Territories, with the Jane Glassco Northern Fellowship and supporting our young northern leaders, those up and coming and those out there doing some great work on behalf of government as well as for their communities, for their Aboriginal governments, I want to ask the Premier, what role does our government play in supporting these young northern leaders with the work that they are doing in the communities and across northern Canada? Thank you.

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.