Julie Green

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be joined by constituents today Maureen Van Overliw and her children Holland and Everett. Thank you for joining us today on International Women's Day.

Yes, thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I'm not sure what exactly is possible. But I believe that it's important to provide accountability to the public for both our spending and our debts. And so I will work with the department to develop some kind of public reporting. I can't say right now whether that will be online or not. But I will work towards public accountability on this public reporting. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And thanks to the Member for the question. The office is now fully staffed. For a while there was an issue with staffing in the office so that they could do their work but that is not an issue at this point.

The basic issue is that it's like playing whackamole in the Department of Health and Social Services. When we finish paying for one thing, another thing needs funding. And this has really become more acute in the time that I've been Minister of Health and Social Services. There are more calls for more services to be covered by our health system than ever before...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the only formal feedback we've had to this date is from individuals who accessed the child and youth care counselling program that was captured in the 2021 community counselling program client satisfaction questionnaire. That questionnaire showed a 78 percent satisfaction rate with CYCC services. But it's important to note that the response rate for that questionnaire was low, and so rather than relying solely on that we are now inviting parents, students, teachers, and community members to give us their views on how the program is working. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And thank you to the Member for the question. It's the practice of Health and Social Services to evaluate programs once they're up and running. The last segment of this program was introduced in the last school year. So the timing was right to conduct an evaluation of the program now. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I think I missed a word in the Member's question, but I think she wants to know what's going to happen after the evaluation of the program is finished.

We can't know that at this point. We need to collect more information from the people who use the program, teachers, parents, students, community members, and we need to hear what the strengths are in the program, what the issues are, and what ideas, hopefully, they have to address those issues. So once that work is complete, we'll have a better idea of the future of it. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the CYCCs are available to talk about a broad range of issues that youth encounter, whether that is drug use and abuse, family violence, negative social interactions, and so on. They are there to support the students and talk to them about the issues that are of concern to them, and that would include drug use. So we have various media campaigns that dissuade or attempt to dissuade people from using drugs, and those would be available to the people in the Tlicho region as they are every other part of the NWT. Thank you.

Yes, thank you. Mr. Speaker, I don't have a firm idea of what the deficit will be. I know that we're paying more for travel; we're paying more for freight; we're paying more for drugs; we're paying more for staff, especially because we have so much temporary staff and they are expensive to acquire and work here. So I am very concerned about all those things that are driving costs up. And on the other side, there is uncertainty about the revenue that we're going to get from Canada through the CHT and the tailored bilaterals, whether they're going to renew the Territorial Health Investment Fund...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, yesterday during the mains examination of the department, I committed to a confidential briefing to the committee on accountability and oversight of the NTHSSA finances, what savings have been realized, what pressures are driving costs up, and so I'm going to repeat that here again today. At a very high level, it can be included in the annual report. But my caution about that is that the annual report won't be out until the fall, and it won't cover anything that happens after the end of this month. So the timeliness of that document is not great. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, this evaluation is not at that point and this is not the forum for HR. Thank you.