Julie Green

Yes, thank you, Mr. Speaker, and thanks to the Member for that question. The focus recently in Health and Social Services has been to provide communitybased funds that have specific applications for services and programs that communities or Indigenous governments, in some cases municipal governments and NGOs, can apply for to create service delivery in their communities.

So this year we announced an addictions recovery and aftercare fund which can be accessed for hiring communitybased counsellors, and those counsellors could support two kinds of projects:

Projects that support individuals...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, following the home and community care review, which was completed and presented to the Members of the Standing Committee on Social Development in the summer of 2020, we've invested in oversight for home support workers to try and develop standards and scope of practice for these positions. So we've been looking at, for example, what kind of clinical supports people need who have complex needs, expanded hours of service as the Member mentioned, and how to meet the needs of the growing population of people who prefer to age in place.

In the Beaufort Delta...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And thank you to the Member for the question. We have some loose ends in this project which we need to tie up before we can provide a specific dollar estimate of the savings.

The analysis that's underway right now is whether it is feasible to attach an extension to the current longterm care at the Inuvik Regional Hospital or whether it would be more effective to build a standalone facility. So this is something that engineering and geotechnical work is looking at evaluating. We do, because we've gone from 48 beds to 16 beds, in any case expect some reduction in the cost...

Yes, thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, as an immigrant myself, I appreciate and value the role of immigration in our society in building our society, providing a skilled workforce. As you may know, my family came here, my dad is a plumber or was at the time we came, a plumber, and we had to go through all these hoops back in the day. And so we want to make things as efficient as possible. But as I said earlier, there are some limitations on what we can do as a territory where this is a federal jurisdiction. And so I'm not able at this time to say that we will match the current fee structure...

Yes, thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I mentioned, we're in discussions with the federal government on this topic. I don't feel like I'm in a position at this time to make a commitment on service standards. But I do take the Member's point that the service turnaround time is putting undue stress on people who are counting on that turnaround time in order to secure their immigration status. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'm going to give a really quick answer. No.

Yes, thank you. Providing those wraparound supports is very important. It's not just the work of one department; it is often the work of many departments. And I'll give an example:

Right now, we're asking for an expression of interest in transitional housing for people who are exiting facilitybased treatment and require a place to live while they maintain their sobriety and build up some stamina in that area. So we're working with the Housing Corporation on that. We work with ECE on issues like income assistance. We work with Justice. This is really a crossdepartmental approach.

As the Minister...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, if the community has used the funds that I'm talking about to hire counsellors, there may, in fact, be someone in place who does addictions outreach, otherwise that would be a function of the community counselling service that exists in either inperson, virtual, or telephone form everywhere throughout the NWT. So community counselling is the place to go for immediate sameday follow-up.

I also wanted to mention that where communities have connectivity, we have a mobile phone app called Wagon, WAGON, which is an interactive aftercare and recovery app which is...

Yes, thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, next year we're going to implement a system called Interride, which I'm sure the Member is familiar with. It's an international assessment tool that assesses people for the kinds of needs they have, the services that they require, and the resources they need to meet their needs. And so this is going to be introduced and implemented for the whole population who requires supported living of some kind. And that will enable the health planner, that we have recently hired, to develop a plan about how to meet these needs, what kind of funding is required...

Yes, thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, this is a bit of an apples and oranges situation because we don't usually take funds dedicated to capital projects and move them into operations and maintenance. So even if there was savings on the capital project, it would be spent on other capital projects, whether for health or some other kind of development.

It's important to know that we get a chunk of funding from the federal government from the First Nations and Inuit home and community care funding, and what happens here is that the regional health and social services authorities identify the...