Rylund Johnson

Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair. I'll just have a couple kind of technical questions. I'm wondering if the Minister has any ability to put this kind of into how much we are spending per day or per week? I get you're asking well, it's $100 million total but, you know, if I had to wager a guess we've probably spent the vast majority of that in the last week or two. I'm just trying to get a sense of, you know, the pace at which we are spending. Is there any of that detail that could be provided? Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm just wondering if the Minister can provide us an update of the initial fire suppression budget and what this initial or this additional $75 million brings us up to as a total and then perhaps try to answer the question whether we think this is the grand total or whether another supplementary appropriation may be coming. Thank you.

In favour.

In favour.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I guess in I guess as a point of procedure, I received this bill a couple hours ago and when I looked it, it requires the emergency management organization to coordinate with Indigenous governments. It's not necessarily clear what "coordinate" means. My understanding of how the emergency management organization works. The team was kind of a fluid organization. You know, sometimes Joint Task Force North is there, sometimes a specific community government is there. It depends where and what emergency we are dealing with at any given time.

You know, I'm not necessarily...

Yeah, thank you, Mr. Speaker. You know, I don't think massage is the right thing. On the one end, we have our community counselling program, and that's great, those people are, you know and then on the hand we have our psychiatrists who have gone through, you know are medical doctors. And we need to take some pressure off of the psychiatrists. They have often said for more advanced disorders, psychology treatment is the way to go.

Can the Minister commit to reviewing whether other jurisdictions have brought psychology into the public system and whether there is a path forward where we can...

Yeah, thank you, Mr. Speaker. You know, I do appreciate that a lot of work has gone into the community counselling program and those wait lists and those times have gotten shorter. It is an improvement that this government has made. But it's clear to me, in speaking with people, that for certain disorders you need a psychologist. You know, that is the recommended treatment from their psychiatrist.

Are there currently any plans for the Department of Health and Social Services to hire any psychologists? I really do believe we need to start down that path. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'd like to share the story of one resident's path to getting healing. It begins with a violent and sudden death of a family member, and that resident, you know, starts to struggle to sleep, develops severe anxiety, has nightmares, and it starts to affect their ability at their job, Mr. Speaker.

Some weeks go by and things don't get better in processing that trauma so they decide to seek help. They do what many of us do. They go to the GNWT website and they find we have a community counselling program. You know, it takes a few calls but eventually they get into a sameday...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I think that's a very unfortunate gap. There is clearly demand for this. You speak to any private psychologist in the territory, their wait list is extremely long, and their fees are extremely high. Many people do not get reimbursed. I am just wondering if right now if a person goes and sees a private psychologist and, you know, they've been told to do that by their doctor, is there any part of that treatment that is covered by our government? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I spoke today in my statement about the need for more psychology services in our territory. I guess, first, I would like to ask just for some basic information about how many psychologists the GNWT presently employs and who exactly they are available for, whether they're available to just members of the general public through some sort of referral system or how you would go about seeing one? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.