Julie Green

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I want to update to talk about steps being taken to address the recruitment and retention of Health and Social Services staff in the Northwest Territories. Members will remember we created a mandate priority to increase the number of resident healthcare professionals by at least 20 percent during this 19th Assembly.

The COVID19 pandemic has further highlighted the need for Health and Social Services workers across Canada and within the Northwest Territories.

Staff in the Department of Health and Social Services and the health and social services authorities...

Yes, thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, each community provides its own wellness plan that is developed itself. The department has a staff of three community development and wellness planners who work with the communities and their wellness plans to support their actions and priorities which reflect their own preferences. The community plans are now a few years old. So there is going to be a territorywide renewal process of the community wellness plans in the next fiscal year. And so that will give communities a chance to review what their priorities are and change them if they see fit...

Yes, thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the priority of the Department of Health and Social Services, with the funds I mentioned, is in fact to ensure the money is taken up by Indigenous governments and communities governments so that they can spend it to the benefit of their population. And as I mentioned, there are staff in the department who work with those organizations to make sure their applications are complete.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. That was quite a number of questions. What I want to say is that the communities develop the community plans, and they are uneven in length and content and scope. The point of having the community development and wellness planners in the department is that they go over these plans with the communities according to their this is a communitydriven process. So according to the amount of interaction that the community wants to have. They are not obliged to engage with this.

We, of course, recognize that mental health is an issue across the territory, and it makes sense that...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, today I am providing an update on easing public health restrictions as we move toward lifting the public health emergency on April 1st. We have seen a steady decline in cases in the NWT since the midJanuary peak after, but not before, Omicron produced over three times the number of new COVID19 infections compared to all previous waves of the virus combined in the NWT.

Given the decline in cases, the Chief Public Health Officer is easing public health restrictions. Effective tomorrow, leisure travel will resume. Anyone will be able to travel into the NWT...

Yes, thank you. In addition to the community wellness plans and that pot of funding, there are of course a number of different funds that communities can apply for. Those include addictions and aftercare supports, peer support, suicide training suicide intervention training, and so on. So they can be linked to the wellness plans or they may not be linked to the wellness plans. But when there is a deadline available for funding to a community on one of these particular subject areas, then I write to the community governments, Indigenous governments, and make them aware of this opportunity, and...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, at the recent bilateral with the Tlicho government, I indicated that we were interested in discussing this possibility. We would like to see a proposal so that we understand what it is that the TCSA would like to do with those positions. And of course that would include a discussion with ECE since the CYCC program is a joint initiative of our two departments. Thank you.

Yes, thank you. The delivery of health and social services in the Tlicho region, as the Member knows, is handled by the Tlicho Community Services Agency. I have met with them once while in this role. Certainly interested in meeting with them again to discuss any of the issues that they are particularly concerned with. The TCSA is also part of the leadership council for the NTHSSA, and so I do see the chair, Ted Blondin, at those meetings, which I attend about once every three months. Thank you.

Yes, thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the best thing the Member can do is refer his constituents to the community counselling program. That's really the gateway to all services related to addictions and aftercare. And so I would invite him to do that. I also want to caution him that having a northern treatment centre is no guarantee that there won't be waitlists.

When Nats'ejee K'eh operated on the Hay River Reserve, there was a month of men's programming followed by a month of women's programming. So if you missed the intake for your gender programming, you could wait up to eight weeks...

Yes, thank you, Mr. Speaker, and I appreciate the question. I have the opportunity to meet with Indigenous organizations at bilateral meetings with my Cabinet colleagues, and I recall that in the time that I've been in this role, which is about 18 months, this issue has come up once, and it was the Tlicho government that raised it. They were doing a cost benefit analysis of a treatment centre for their region. If other Indigenous governments raise this, I'm certainly willing to engage in the conversation. I think the question is what the valueadded of a building is; what would it provide that...