Sandy Lee

Absolutely, I am willing to do that and prepared to do that, Mr. Speaker.

I’d like to just give notice to the Members that I’m in the process of having the department review our entire mental health and addictions strategy. The current plan that we have in place has been in the works for about four or five years.

But I think there’s room for a change and room for revising and re-profiling, specifically giving more multi-dimensional roles to our community workers, social workers, mental health workers, so that we have a holistic approach towards those who walk into the office and need help. Right...

Mr. Speaker, obviously that’s a very complicated issue, and it’s one that has to be addressed in multi-faceted ways. The government and the Department of Health work with other organizations on suicide prevention, working with youth. The government funds various programs to support youth. I think over the last two, three years, we have made some progress in that area.

Specifically to mental health and addictions issues in small communities, it is a constant challenge to be able to provide a community-based program. We do fund about $7 million for 75 positions. But in the last three, four, five...

Mr. Speaker, as far as I understand, all of the programs for mental health counselling and community support work in that area are delivered by Yellowknife Health and Social Services Authority, which oversees that community.

Currently in Lutselk’e there has been a vacancy of the mental health addictions worker there for about a year. In that period of time the services have been provided by Yellowknife Health and Social Services Authority, which is in charge of those services. So there have been three workers travel to Lutselk’e on a periodic basis to provide services, one of them specializing in youth counselling.

I’d like to advise the Member the latest is we have been able to hire somebody, and we have had verbal commitment from a mental health specialist, and we hope we’ll be able to fill that position on a...

From our point of view, our timeline is as soon as possible, but obviously, there are lots of parties involved. Not only is it the federal government, but all the other governments that fall under this agreement. It is an agreement that we need to open up and renegotiate. We have asked for that negotiation to happen. We have not heard back yet.

So timeline.... We will work on that as much as possible, because it is a crucial issue. We are looking at all options available to the government, to see what additional pressure and stress we could put on this so we could come to a resolution. Thank...

I’d like to thank the Member for bringing that matter to my attention. I had a chance to meet with him and the mayor of Tuk this morning for breakfast, and that issue was brought up too. I am in the process of finding out details on that, and I’m hoping that I can have answers for him by the end of today.

Mr. Speaker, I can advise the Member that this definitely is an issue that is on top of our agenda, not only for myself, as the Minister, but for the Cabinet as a whole. The Premier has brought this issue up in all of his meetings with the Prime Minister and the Minister of DIAND. I am working on meeting with the Minister of Health, the Hon. Clement, as soon as we can arrange a meeting to speak about this in person. I also need to clarify that the issue here is about a gap between the funding that we get from the federal government for our aboriginal peoples, but it’s really not an outstanding...

Mr. Speaker, I wish to table the following document, entitled Status of Women Council of the N.W.T. annual report 2006-2007.

Document 34-16(2), Status of Women Council 2006-2007 Annual Report, tabled.

Mr. Speaker, this is on high alert, obviously, because we only have four full-time-equivalent positions, or hours available, of doctors’ services out of the eight that we normally have.

We are doing everything we possibly can to fill them with the locums and to fill the permanent positions as soon as possible.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the Member for the question. As I indicated to the Member from Nunakput yesterday, we are experiencing a very unusual situation, even within the context of the shortages of doctors and health care professionals we normally face.

This month two doctors were on scheduled leave, and the other two decided to move elsewhere to practise. Right now we are operating with about 50 per cent of our normal complement of doctors.

We are actively searching to fill the positions by locums so that we can provide the services. Beaufort-Delta made a choice of not being able to have the...