Daryl Dolynny

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It’s great to be back and it’s hard not to notice your brand-new moccasins today. Looking good, my friend, looking good.

Mr. Speaker, earlier this summer, and in stunning fashion, our Minister of Health and Social Services made a unilateral decision to cease funding to our only territorial residential addictions treatment facility.

I can assure the people of the Northwest Territories, if this was a complete surprise, you were not alone. We all know that drug and alcohol addictions are a very serious scourge in every community, large and small. Addictions are an immense...

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...

The verdict is out. The people want answers. The people deserve answers to these addiction questions. In the spirit of transparency, I will be asking the Minister of Health, the man with the plan, to please enlighten us with his vision later today. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you. First off is Mr. Nadli.

Mr. Moses.

The motion is in order. To the motion.

Thank you, Mr. Nadli. The motion is in order. To the motion.

Mr. Yakeleya.