Julie Green

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, that long list of health and addictions counsellors and wellness workers and so on, these are permanent staff in Hay River. And so they are there indefinitely. The additional resources really depend on the demand. So we are expecting there could be a surge in demand tomorrow after the or Friday, pardon me, after the community debriefings.

At this point, we haven't had an overwhelming response to our offer. But the resources are in place, and we encourage people who need them to use them. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I'm pleased to say we have lots of capacity. There are two fulltime mental health and addictions counsellors, one fulltime child and youth care counsellor, one parttime practicum student, two community wellness workers, a clinic supervisor for CYCC, and a manager who also sees clients. Two additional mental health counsellors are arriving in Hay River from Fort Smith to facilitate community debriefings that are planned for later this week. We also, through HRSSA's communities counselling service, they attend the Soaring Eagle Friendship Centre sharing...

Good afternoon, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, when I became Minister of Health and Social Services in August 2020, I had the opportunity to add two personal priorities to the Premier’s mandate letter for me. One of the two was to reduce the toll of substance abuse on the residents of the Northwest Territories by leading a wholeofgovernment interdepartmental approach to developing evidencebased policies and programs and develop a robust addictions treatment aftercare regime, including a territorial alcohol strategy.

Mr. Speaker, I chose this priority for a couple of reasons. The first is that I am...

For.

Yes, thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the points that are being made today. It is a priority of the health system to ensure that people have equitable access to safe and effective healthcare. I know that isn't the case all the time. But "all the time" is certainly what we are striving for.

It's important to say that we are facing an unprecedented crisis of staffing in our healthcare system. We have vacancies across the board. We have, coming out on Friday, our health human resources plan, which will discuss some of the medium and longterm initiatives that we plan to take to...

Yes, thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we've done quite a lot of work in my time expanding the number of communitybased treatment programs that are available to Indigenous governments primarily and also to community governments. It's really driven by those entities about what range of ages they take into their programs.

So, for example, we have the On the Land Healing Fund, Community Suicide Prevention Fund, Peer Support Fund, and Addictions Recovery and Aftercare Fund.

So these funds are set up with a focus but the implementation is really, as I said just now, up to the Indigenous...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, what we consider in providing addiction services for our youth and children is the vulnerability of the population and our ability to support them. So I feel very confident that having that response come through child and family services is very important.

One of the services they offer, for example, is when a child goes to treatment outside of the community, outside of the territory, they arrange for courtesy supervision, which means that there's a social worker where the child is who will check on them, connect them to any additional services and make sure...

Yes, thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I want to point out that the situation is very different in the Yukon. They have declared a public health emergency around overdose deaths following a series of deaths right after the New Year. We had three overdose deaths in the NWT in the first three quarters of last year. And three is too many. But compared to the toll that alcohol takes on people in the NWT, alcohol is a much more significant problem, and it's the one that we are addressing with the development of the territorial alcohol strategy. Thank you.

Yes, thank you, Mr. Speaker. And thank you for the question.

There's obviously an overlapping responsibility here where Justice is primarily responsible for what's criminal and how to enforce that, and Health and Social Services is responsible for what is a health issue and how to respond to that. So the change yesterday doesn't address the primary concern of health which safe supply of illicit drugs, the amount of drugs, and whether they qualify as possession or should be seized is really a Justice issue. Thank you.

Yes, thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we respond to requests and we make the services available in those debrief situations to the whole community so that there's confidentiality available. So crisis debriefs have been offered to key players in the flood response. And there are debriefs scheduled for Friday in the morning and the afternoon at the Hay River Recreation Centre. So I would appreciate the Member's help in making these known to his community so that people can choose to attend. Thank you.