Glen Abernethy

The Territorial Board, the Health Board, which consists or chairs from all the Regional Wellness Councils, has actually been working on the development of a strategic plan for the Health and Social Services system. From that strategic plan all the Regional Wellness Councils would be expected to then in turn develop some plans at a local or regional level for the delivery of services and the required tailoring and adjustments made at a regional level.

That work is part of the work that they're doing. It's part of the mandate of the authority. I think the Member is asking for a larger, broader...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, as the Member has indicated, the Territorial Health Authority has gone live. All the Regional Wellness Councils are in place. We've conducted training throughout the Northwest Territories with different members of the Regional Wellness Councils, including the chairs who formed the Territorial Authority. There have been meetings at the Territorial Authority level with the board, meetings with the Regional Wellness Councils at the local level, as well as training, like I said, across the Northwest Territories.

It's up and running. We're getting good feedback...

I don't think we are differing in our opinions around the broader scope of food security and the value of that as it supports health for residents across the Northwest Territories. As I said, we focus on encouraging people to live healthy lifestyles. We do that through our Healthy Family programs. We do that through the education that we are supporting in the Department of Education in the schools around healthy living, healthy eating, and the value of nutrition.

Mr. Speaker, in the information that we provide across the Northwest Territories when we are attending our health fairs or our...

There are a couple of different things that are happening. One, as an example, departmental staff attended an invitation-only event, We Belong, which is an international forum on life promotion to address Indigenous suicide, in November 2016, which was hosted by the Canadian Foundation for Health Care Improvement. We had an opportunity to go and learn and bring back some of the information from those and apply it to programs across the Northwest Territories.

Mr. Speaker, the department also continues to deliver on-the-land healing fund for mental health and addictions, which goes to different...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, before I get into the details, I just would like to point out that this was the first delivery of this model. There was some advertising for it, but clearly there wasn't enough. At this point, we are not panicked, but we do have to do some more communication. Mr. Speaker, the first delivery was January 30th. We had two people registered. Neither of them called in. At the end of the day, we had nobody call in to that group help line. As I said, we are not panicked yet, but we recognize we have to do some better communication to get that information out there...

In the last government, the government, in cooperation with NGOs, Aboriginal governments, community governments, and other stakeholders, put together an antipoverty framework. One of the things that has frustrated me about that important work, and it was important work and I appreciate all the work the stakeholders have put in, but it is something we hear time and time again. Number one, there is no evaluation criteria established for any of the work being done on addressing poverty in the Northwest Territories. Number two, there was no real agreedupon definition of what poverty is.

These are...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, addressing poverty, as the Member is aware, certainly is the responsibility of all departments, all boards and agencies, as well as NGOs and individuals themselves. The Department of Health and Social Services can do things to help individuals combat poverty here in the Northwest Territories. There's a large list, but I'll just touch on a couple of the things that we're doing.

Throughout the Northwest Territories, we've been holding community health fairs to help people understand the types of things we all need to be doing, making healthy choices to support...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, when it comes to nutrition in the Northwest Territories, the Department of Health and Social Services through Public Health is trying to educate people across the Northwest Territories on healthy choices, healthy eating, and how it relates to overall health and wellbeing.

As far as a food security policy, we don't have a food security policy within the department. We're more focused on education and having people understand the value and importance of eating good food. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

To ensure that the care coaches -- those are the individuals who actually respond to the calls and are participating in the group counselling -- are ready to work with residents of the Northwest Territories, information is provided to them on a regular basis about the Northwest Territories; the realities, region by region, of the types of challenges that are being faced; the number of suicides; other mental health challenges; as well as some of the community realities so that they are aware of those realities. They also have a number of local resources that they can call in, the health and...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the Member is asking for my opinion on something that I haven't actually had any discussion with the Member on. I'm not sure exactly what the Member means by an "integrated case management approach" to this particular challenge that we face across the Northwest Territories. I would be happy if the Member were to send me something from committee and himself outlining exactly what he's talking about so that I can get informed, so that I could therefore develop an opinion.