Julie Green

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the vaccines that come to the Northwest Territories come from the federal stockpile. You need a specific licence, I've learned, in order to reallocate unused vaccine outside of the Northwest Territories. So we try to order only as much vaccine as we need so that the federal government has a grip on how much surplus they have to devote to other parts of the country or to other parts of the world as the Member referenced. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, when a resident of the Northwest Territories, who has been to a southernbased addiction treatment centre is ready to be discharged, the centre creates a discharge plan which puts the resident in touch with local resources such as the community counselling program. That would be the primary method.

The resident would then go on to attend counselling appointments; AA, if it's available in the community where the person is. We have a peer support fund which would enable people to create groups like AA in their communities if they thought that would be useful...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we we raised the value of the ontheland healing program in the fiscal year before this one. It's now worth $1.825 million. And so I feel that the money is adequate.

I note, and I have done this before, that the Tlicho are not taking advantage of all the different funds that are available to them for communitybased mental health and addictions support. So we've talked about the northern Indigenous wellness counsellors, who are here today. There was an open call to Indigenous governments to use our money, a milliondollar pot, to hire these counsellors. We do...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I rise to acknowledge and thank the people who are the northern Indigenous Wellness Warrior graduates. I'm pleased see Johnny Ongahak here and the rest of this group.

We created, at the Department of Health and Social Services, an addictions recovery and aftercare fund in order to assist communities to hire these graduates and help with addictions aftercare at the community level. I am happy to say that we've got nine agreements in place. They are in communities from Fort Smith to the Beaufort Delta. And we are very pleased that you are willing to take on...

Favour.

I note that when the vote was called, the Member for Great Slave was not in her seat and I'm challenging the validity of her voting in this exercise. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, today we are at a giant crossroads. It had always been my approach, and it will remain my approach for the rest of my time here, that I was elected first and foremost to serve the people of the Northwest Territories, all of them, from Fort Smith to Sachs Harbour and back again.

And I pay special attention to my constituency, which is Yellowknife Centre, which is a very diverse constituency. I have the bulk of the homeless population. There's some really fancy houses over on Matonabee, lots of apartments, apartments that are so densely populated they're...

In favour.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the Member and I are entirely on the same page. We will not be able to substantially reduce the COVID infection rates if we are not all globally vaccinated.

I have certainly advocated for greater vaccination allocations to the global south, as the Member called it, and I know that my colleague, the Premier, has also done that. We understand the vulnerability of some of those populations. They're very much like the vulnerability of our own Indigenous population in terms of poor underlying health conditions and poor health outcomes. And so obviously getting...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and my thanks to the Member for the question. The current stock of vaccine that we have expires at the end of May, and specifically that's Pediatric Pfizer and Moderna. So we continue to offer clinics, and we hope to use up much of that inventory by the end of May. We can provide either appointments or walkin vaccinations, whichever is most convenient for people.

We, as the Member may know, switched from a nowasted dose to nomissedopportunity to vaccinate people some time ago. So our vanishingly small wastage rate has increased a little so that we can vaccinate someone...