Julie Green

Yes. Thank you. This is really a heartbreaking situation for elders. They tend to have a smaller social circle as they age, and COVID, of course, has made that even smaller. This is really not a budgetary issue. This is an issue of public health, and what I have heard the Chief Public Health Officer say is that, when most of the population has received a second dose of COVID-19 vaccine, it will be possible to relax internal restrictions, internal in the NWT, and that may include things like visiting long-term care centres. Right now, that does not happen because it is considered to be too...

Yes, thank you. I would like to refer this question to the director of finance.

That was about 10 questions. I'll do what I can here. Certainly, the department is on track to deliver a number of programs at this point. We are preparing to roll out our peer support program, which provides money on an application basis to communities to set up things like AA and Wellbriety groups to assist people in retaining their sobriety. This work is on target, and we'll start on April 1st of this year.

In addition to that, the department continues to work with Indigenous governments and Indigenous government organizations to assist them in accessing the On-the-Land Healing Fund. Of...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I will take that as a comment.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I note these aren't really budgetary questions, but we are prepared to answer any and all questions about the work of the department. I will ask the deputy minister to answer this, please.

Yes. Thank you. I will start this, and then I will turn it over to Ms. Mathison. We have a very generous set of core services that are offered by our health authorities, and we need to ensure that we can continue those services now that we have them offered to our residents. We cannot say to people, "You could be out of work in March because we think that we will be out of money by then." The real question facing the health authorities is: what is the scope of our core services and what are the extras? Are we going to continue to fund all of the extras and continue adding to our deficit, or...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and thank you for the question. The department does, indeed, have a mandate commitment to establish nine transitional housing units for individuals returning from addictions treatment. The timeline on this commitment is completion by fall of 2023. Work is under way. The jurisdictional scan, research into best practices, and the scan of existing services have all been completed. These pieces of work will be used to inform the development of an NWT model for these transitional homes. To achieve an item of this nature, we need to work in an integrated manner with my...

I will ask Ms. Mathison to tell me that. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Could the Member please expand on what he means by "residencies"? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I am not sure that I have a projected deficit yet. I do not know that they have done their budget. I think they are waiting for us to finish our budget. The last figure I have for the deficit was $120,700,000. Thank you.