Julie Green

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, these are Department of Health and Social Services staff. There is only the one location. It's in Yellowknife. And it provides the policy, legislation, financial, and service support for NTHSSA and for the Tlicho Community Service Agency and Hay River Health and Social Services Agency. So the service delivery is decentralized but the policy and planning is located in Yellowknife. Thank you.

Yes, thank you. This particular fund was new in this fiscal year, and the object of the fund is to build capacity within the NWT to provide mental wellness and addictions recovery support. I don't have any information yet on how much of that was taken up.

With respect to treatment, there are in territory and out of territory options. It's really up to the individual to speak with a counsellor and look at the options and decide what's best for them. And we don't have any limits on that fund. People can go to treatment more than once. They can go more than once in a year. They can go to a...

Yes, thank you. I don't think there has been that kind of an assessment of the facility in Hay River. Generally speaking, we had moved away from facilitybased care for people who need supported living and instead have them in family groups or near family groups rather than in group homes. So I don't think anything will happen with that facility in Hay River. I mean, there are no plans to change it but I don't see either that we would expand it.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, the deficit for the last fiscal year is $33.7 million. It was driven by the following factors:

Compensation and benefits, including overtime. Staff relocation and removal and call backs;

Secondly, physician services;

Thirdly, chemotherapy drugs;

Fourthly, foster care and voluntary service supports; and.

Fifth, health services that were transferred to the correctional facilities during that year.

We don't have that broken down by percentage. Thank you.

Yes, thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, for the record, most of these funds have a onepage application and the reporting on it is as simple. But what I've heard at the bilateral tables with Indigenous governments is that they often even lack the capacity to come up with a proposal. So the paperwork is not really the problem. It's once they get the money how are they going to spend it.

One thing that the NWT Council of Leaders asked the Department of Health and Social Services for was to create block funding with some of these funds, particularly mental wellness and addictions recovery, peer...

Thank you. I'll ask the director of finance to answer, please.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, let me say initially that this isn't just a Hay River problem. With a 45 percent vacancy rate, there is a doctor shortage throughout the whole of the NWT. We continue to actively recruit doctors, and we have had some success but, ultimately, we still do have a large vacancy rate. So there's no way I can commit to immediately providing the seven doctors allocated to Hay River Health and Social Services. The best thing that can happen here is for word of mouth from existing physicians and medical people to their networks to encourage them to give the NWT a...

Okay, I'm trying to grab the question. So where we don't have resident doctors to provide specialized services, people are sent south for treatment. So most recently you would have heard about the rheumatology program. There was a regular visitor rheumatologist who became unavailable. And the result of that is we were unable to hire another resident or longterm rheumatologist and so people are going south to receive treatment. We decided that that provided the best continuity of care. So I think that more than anything, the situation with rheumatology points to how fragile our health system is...

Yes, thank you. So the IRC I know has used mental wellness and addictions recovery funding to fund Project Jewel. And I believe that they report on that annually. I don't know if they've done their own evaluation of that program but we would certainly welcome them doing that because it is a program that's been around for quite a while.

I think it's fair to say that the mental health needs of the population of the planet have escalated since the pandemic began, and people are struggling to keep up with the demands for counselling and other kind of supports. We have community counselling. We have...

Yes, thank you, Madam Chair. I'll ask the deputy minister to talk about how that was developed. Thank you.