Alfred Moses

Seeing that it’s a new facility and we do have a lot of high incident rates of clientele that do go there, I think it would be in the best interest of this department to work at bringing those services into the House. Some type of counselling or some type of partnership where they can assist these clientele with the help and support that they need. Is that something he might be bringing into the next business plan for the next fiscal year?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move that we report progress.

---Carried

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I see there was an increase of seven positions and they all went into the Yellowknife headquarters. Can I just get a quick breakdown of what these positions are, and if they were consulted into looking into the communities at all when they were first introduced?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As you can tell, we are going on a theme here. We are talking about the high cost of living in the Northwest Territories. For anybody that doesn’t see it, it would be a good opportunity to go into the communities and see how hard our people have to struggle in the smaller communities.

This is something that affects us all. We talk about the high cost of food, but it does affect our communities, where we’re actually putting people into poverty throughout the Northwest Territories.

We had a good discussion today on mental health and addictions and how people who go into...

There was mention of three positions under the THSSI funding for the two-year project. Are there any plans in place for all the good work, should this work be incomplete at the end of the two years and the THSSI funding running out, is there any plan of action to continue the work or is it just going to come to a halt? The work, especially with the shared services, I think that’s an important one. Was there any plan to look at how these positions can either continue on or how the work that these positions have been working on does continue?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. First off I just want to welcome the Minister and his staff here and just let him know that I do appreciate the hard work and the dedication that this department has to the health and well-being in providing the services and programs to the people of the Northwest Territories. I do know it’s a challenge. With all the challenges that we face in the remote communities and the high cost of living that we have in the Northwest Territories as well, you try to do the best with what you have.

That said, there are challenges and there are concerns that I bring from my constituents...

I’m glad to hear that the Minister wants to take a look into this. In this sense we get the young families who want to start out a family yet there’s no investment for them. I know some of them say they’ll take a two-bedroom house and even though they say they’ll accept it, under the policy they’re still not able to take it, even though they’re willing to say they’ll make do with what they have, just to get out of paying market rent and money just going into the rental area.

On the same side, we do get some singles where there are two-bedrooms available, but with some singles they say that they...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Before I begin I will just apologize and just reiterate anything I said yesterday just to kind of speed up the process.

Looking at the opening remarks, I just wanted to make a comment on the expenditures that were put forth for the budget here in the amount of $43.9 million. I do recall in previous discussion we talked about the lack of arrears. When arrears are not being collected, it does affect the maintenance program because that money actually goes directly into maintaining the units. When we do these expenditures and if we’re looking at putting some new units in the...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Just one quick question in terms of community justice. I still see it’s relatively the same, but there is, I think, about a $170,000 decrease into the community justice from last year, under community justice, the line items. Anyhow, seeing the importance of community justice programs in our communities and the diversion programs, on-the-land programs that they do and the intervention work that they do, is the Minister willing to take a look and add those dollars again, possibly next business plan? Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to make one quick comment before I get into my question, that we’re very fortunate in Inuvik that we do have a pretty good police force and they are actually proactive doing a lot of patrols and they do our road checks and they’re very proactive. It’s really great.

The Minister mentioned the RCMP Complaints Commission. Does he have stats on how many complaints they receive for a year? Thank you.