Sandy Lee

We have provided this info as a response to lots of questions that the Member has raised. He is right; he has raised this before. This program is oversubscribed; it went way beyond its budget. We have one person in there and we are spending all the money that we have available in that budget and we are not able to take in new people unless we come with new money, which is the reason why we need to review this as we need to review the Nurse Practitioner Program and nursing programs. We need to look at all the demands on educational programs for health and social services staffing and we need to...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. That speaks to various programs that we have within the department which is funded to authorities to assist our residents who need special support. In Yellowknife we deliver that program through Yellowknife Health and Social Services Authority who funds to YACL and YWCA and other homes and facilities. Is the Member asking for a specific dollar amount for that or is that program criteria that he’s looking for?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. With that money we envision creating four family home visitors centres, two in the Deh Cho and two in Beau-Del. This is for the development and delivery of early intervention initiatives which will promote the development of a strength-based, solution-focused, family-centred delivery of support services. Specifically trained support workers who will work with families to optimize the home environment for the health and physical, mental and emotional well-being of children and families. This initiative is similar to the current Healthy Families Program model, which...

Mr. Speaker, obviously there is an avenue for a Legislature or next Legislature to consider reorganizing portfolios for seniors or whatever. But from my personal point of view -- and I have had many discussions with the Member about this -- so many things that the seniors need and help with cover different departments and those departments are complex and they need to specialize in those areas, whether they be Health and Social Services, or Housing or income security. Those on their own are vast programs.

Mr. Speaker, for now it appears that the Member has a very specific situation respecting...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I was talking about CHN program, which the Member for Kam Lake was referring to. I am not sure if he was referring to that as an Aurora College program but I was speaking of it in the context of overall human resource training programs for health and social services assistance. CHN program is fully subscribed, as the Member is aware because I have stated that a number of times. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would not disagree with that. I just want to note that Foundation for Change action plan has a number of priorities and objectives. It’s a three-year plan and there are some areas where we are able to fund it, but we have made it clear from the beginning that those are planned, those are what we want to do, subject to finding resources.

I could provide the Member with what we have in the department on that topic.

Yes, I am willing to look at that. We need to be mindful of the fact, though, that addictions and mental health programming needs to have a spectrum of services and there is a place for residential and more acute care. We have been looking at some of the money we are spending on sending people down south to institutional settings and we have been refocusing our energy on seeing if we can use that resource better within the Territories. This is what we are doing in the North. So yes, I’d be happy to discuss that further with the Member.

Thank you. I don’t have all of the information for all of the communities in the Territories in front of me, but for Lutselk’e we provide $186,000 for Lutselk’e mental health and addictions. We also provide $23,000 for Lutselk’e cultural programs; $76,876 for Deninu K’ue First Nation to fund their addiction counsellor position in Fort Resolution, and in addition we provided $23,000 to Deninu K’ue First Nation for youth addiction initiatives. That’s just an example of the different programming funding that we provide to smaller communities.

I take the Member’s point that maybe we should look at...

Mr. Speaker, as we are all aware, we have 31 communities in the Northwest Territories. I think the communities like Inuvik or Fort Simpson, Hay River, Norman Wells, are good candidates for having midwifery services where mothers could be supported from surrounding communities. Obviously I don’t think we could do it in the smallest of communities where there might be two or three births. I believe originally the Midwifery Program was targeted for Hay River. The community chose not to take that on and that position started in Yellowknife.

So this is an important issue and it needs a comprehensive...