Glen Abernethy

I had an opportunity to sit in the gallery and listen to the youth parliamentarians during their debate, and it was great to be there, it was great to hear everything they had to say. I have to say, one of the things that I found unfortunate is many of the things they were talking about, including the ability to have some supports online and using tools that are useful to them, they didn't seem to recognize that they existed, which means we have failed to do our job to help get that information out to them.

What I can tell you is we have a significant number of supports that are available...

This is an incredibly important area. I don't think there's a Member from a small community throughout the Northwest Territories, an MLA, who has not raised traditional foods as an issue. The designer of Stanton, the Health and Social Services Authority, has recognized the value in that, and we have taken steps to make sure that we can provide traditional foods in Stanton, and from there we can learn and develop opportunities to look at other locations.

Having said that, they're not serving traditional food today. The targeted rollout date of the availability of traditional foods, as I said...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Our commitment to cultural safety and culturally respectful healing is a system-wide endeavour, and the Health and Social Services system is making changes to service delivery to ensure that this commitment is reflected across the entire Northwest Territories. Yes, a number of activities have taken place in the new Stanton. We are hoping to learn from these initiatives to make sure that, where we can roll them out in different communities, we will. Some of them are infrastructure-related and may not be able to be done in hospitals that are already constructed, but...

I wasn't suggesting it wouldn't be part of the agreement. I just suggested it's too early to presuppose what that agreement is going to look like, so I appreciate the Member suggesting that I said or suggested something else. With respect to a phone line, we're totally open to that. It actually does make some sense. We've tried to set up a situation to give those neighbours an opportunity to call somebody within the system already. If it needs to be clearer, if we need to set it up in a more structured way, we're happy to do that. I think it's important that we work with our neighbours. This...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. A number of months ago, the mayor of Yellowknife actually approached me with information on these Good Neighbour Agreements. At that time, I did direct the department to do the research into the Good Neighbour Agreements and approach the neighbours to see if there was any interest in actually pursuing those agreements here in Yellowknife with the neighbours around the day shelter sobering centre. There appears to be some interest.

One of the neighbours has actually submitted a draft for consideration, recognizing that this is about getting an agreement from all the...

To ensure the safety and security of children and youth who are placed in foster homes, all applicants and adults over the age of 19 must complete a home study, child protection records check, and a criminal records check in order to be approved as a foster home. Foster caregivers and foster children are seen by child protection workers according to the department's contract standards and policies. I will note that this is one of the areas that we did have difficulty and was identified in the audit. Through our quality improvement plan, we have already started to see improvements in this area...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There are 159 foster caregivers in the Northwest Territories today. Twenty-eight of those are in the Deh Cho. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, I wish to table the following two documents entitled "2019-20 Health and Social Services Authority Budgets"; and "Impacts of the NWT on the Land Collaborative & Land-Based Programming." Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I've already directed the department to reach out to youth and partners like Education, Culture and Employment to figure out how best to get that information, and this is consistent with what we heard from youth when we held Back to the Trail, which helped our Youth Mental Health and Addictions Action Plan, but another thing that I've learned from talking to young people is they don't want old people like me telling them how to use technology or how to get that information. They want to tell us how they want to access that information. So I think, in addition to working with our partners at...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member is correct, we rolled out a Youth Mental Health and Addictions Action Plan last fiscal year. It's a four-year plan, including rolling out travelling youth counsellors, who are the professionals the Member is highlighting throughout the Northwest Territories, 49 positions over four years. We're in year two. We staffed up in the Tlicho and the Deh Cho last fiscal year. This year, we are staffing up in the Beaufort-Delta and the Sahtu region. Next fiscal year, we will be staffing up in Yellowknife, and the fourth year, we will be staffing up in the South Slave...