Norman Yakeleya

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have a big bone to pick with the Department of Health and Social Services. The Northwest Territories has the largest per capita population of residential school survivors in the country, and the distressed voices of residential school survivors are constantly ringing in my ears, but the department gives one excuse after another. It says it doesn’t have enough money for a full continuum of mental health and addictions services. Things like one-on-one therapy, made-in-the-North residential treatment and after-care for recovering addicts.

It’s time for a reality check. No...

The last count, as the Minister of Education said, there’s 5,500 so far that he knows of, of people in the Northwest Territories who have attended the residential schools. I say that number is higher, up to at least 10,000. That is devastating in the Northwest Territories. If you look at the history of the residential schools and the terrible effect it had on residential school survivors and their mental health, we have yet to come a long, long way to provide good mental health. So I’d be happy to share this with the Minister.

I want to ask, has this department looked at any type of mobile...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to continue my questions to the Minister of Health and Social Services in regard to the mental health services provided in our small communities.

The Minister’s Forum on Addictions and Community Wellness, Healing Voices, has 67 recommendations and 12 members that visit 21 communities. In there, in the recommendations, 47 to 51 talks specifically about mental health in our communities and these recommendations are very, I would say, shallow. So I want to ask the Minister, this indication as to the type of mental health support in our small communities, it’s really...

My question for the Minister of Health, I’ve been told that one of the weaknesses of the Nats'ejee K'eh facility was its failure to fully make use of the free counselling offered by Health Canada to residential school survivors. Can the Minister comment on this claim?

Thank you, Madam Chair. I do want to say to the Minister that we certainly look forward to the long-term care facility in the Sahtu. It’s going to be located in Norman Wells and also the new health care centre. We’ll continue to look forward to the implementation more so that the staff who are going to be filling those positions working with Education, Culture and Employment and Aurora College to get the message out there that there are opportunities for people in the Sahtu region and the North with regard to staffing that facility. There are spinoffs to having a facility such as a long-term...

With Transportation we also get our regional office for the airports. It’s out of the Inuvik region. I’m saying Transportation has that office up there.

Is the Minister also looking at that section of the department?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Freedom. Such a powerful word. People fight for it, children yearn for it, companies aspire to it and governments protect it at all costs. As individuals, we cherish it. Sahtu region wants its freedom, wants its independence. We have tasted it. We have known what it is like to have departments slowly coming into the regions ourselves to make our own decisions based on the realities of the Sahtu lifestyle.

The time has come for the other regions to let go of their shackles on the Sahtu and allow it to make its own decisions.

For example, the Department of Transportation...

We have maybe seven, eight months left in the term of this government. Are there some concrete plans from this government, this department, to look at, maybe in the 18th, that maybe Transportation will be moving or consider moving to the Sahtu so that the Sahtu can have their own superintendent and their own regional office that would be deemed as an independent office in our region?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There’s a quote, and I talked about it earlier in my Member’s statement. The quote says, “Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.” I want to ask the Minister of Transportation in regards to this type of issue I was talking about. It’s just a simple one, a small one and I’ve been asking for a number of years, especially at this time of the year that…

I want to ask the Minister, are there any types of plans within the Department, the government, to look at decentralizing the transportation office into the Sahtu?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to ask the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Intergovernmental Relations questions. I listened with interest as the Minister talked about the Metis people organizations in the Northwest Territories. The Premier mentioned $20,000 to the Metis organizations.

Can the Premier inform the House as to how many Metis organizations have received this $20,000 and what is the $20,000 for, for these Metis organizations?