Daryl Dolynny

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Does committee agree to bring witnesses into the Chamber?

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. We’ll allow Minister Abernethy to close this.

Thank you, Premier McLeod. That looks like it concludes my list of general comments. Is committee prepared to go into detail?

Thank you. If I can turn your attention to 2-2. This is a deferral, so if I could then turn to page 2-4. Human Resources, activity summary, human resources strategy and policy, infrastructure investment summary, infrastructure investments, $441,000. Does committee agree? Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Aumond. Moving on with general comments we have Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, committee. If I could get the Sergeant-at-Arms to escort the witnesses into the Chamber, thanks.

Minister Abernethy, if you could please introduce your witnesses to the House.

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. We’ll go to Premier McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’d like to welcome the Minister and his dream team of finance expertise here. I want to commend, I mean I know what it takes to put a budget together and this is not an easy endeavour. Albeit this is not the biggest budget we’ve seen in the House, this is still a fairly significant budget with respect to the public’s money.

I’m going to keep my comments somewhat general, but I want to make sure that they’re taken in the context as is being delivered, and it’s important that it is being taken in the context delivered. You may hear, and you’ve heard maybe some overlap and...

Thank you. I concur there was no medical detox occurring at Nats’ejee K’eh, but the question of medical detox has been asked many times in this House. We’ve been promised here that there will be beds put aside we’ve heard in Yellowknife, we’ve also heard in Inuvik. But you go to the hospital and you ask the question, can you take me to the medical detox bed, and they’ll say we don’t know what you’re talking about. There is no sign on the door that says “medical detox bed”. There are such beds put aside in the event of capacity issues, yet are never used.

So, leading to another question here...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to follow up on my Member’s statement earlier today on addictions and the closing of the Nats’ejee K’eh. This is the first opportunity I think the public has had to hear some of the rationale behind the Minister and the department as to the closing of this addictions facility, and really what is the plan of action for addiction treatment to follow in the Northwest Territories. We all know the issues. I’m not going to go into a long preamble because I do have a long list of questions, which probably will require a couple of times of going up to the table here.

So...