Tom Beaulieu

One of our initiatives, through the Aboriginal health and community wellness division, is to develop wellness plans in all of the communities. Within those wellness plans, we are going to determine whether or not an on-the-land treatment program is what that community wants. Once that has been determined, our intention is to try to fund all of the treatment programs that are being proposed over the next couple of years. Money permitting, our intention is to try to fund them. Thank you.

Thank you. If the Gwich’in are able to line up some other uses for the facility. I recognize that they have talked about the other departments that may be able to use that facility and then it becomes feasible for them to operate. At that point, they said that that building could be available for a treatment program or two. So if they’re able to run some other programs and I can’t remember specifically, but he mentioned that they had worked with ENR, they’ve worked with Justice to make that a possibility. If that place is operational and we have a program developed, we certainly want to put a...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The department has approved three proposals for on the land. We are going to treat them as pilots so we can do an evaluation of those. That will give us good groundwork needed to work with communities to develop further on-the-land treatment programs. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, we have. We’ve met with them. We had some discussions. The deputy minister went up to Inuvik one time when I was not able to go and also had some further discussions with them. I met with the vice-president of the Gwich’in Tribal Council here in Yellowknife about two weeks ago, I would say, and we talked specifically about the use of that facility. He recognizes, and the Gwich’in recognize, that it would just not be able to be completely a centre used for only treatment, but that that centre could be used for other things. It could be seasonal. So we’ve had that...

Mr. Speaker, I’m sorry; I didn’t hear the Member’s question.

That’s a very difficult question. Success is largely measured by the individual themself who is attending treatment. Sometimes the counsellors and individuals determine success by the individual attending treatment. Sometimes they determine success by the individual finishing treatment and sometimes they determine success by the length of time the individual stays clean and sober after treatment. There’s no specific time. Some people say they have reached success if they have been sober six months, some is a year and some don’t ever believe they will ever reach success because they will never...

Mr. Speaker, until the Department of Health officially gives up the asset, it would remain with us. The thought is that we do that. Public Works has always maintained the building, so that’s continuing. This is a government asset sitting on reserve land, but we will continue to use the building. Public Works will continue to maintain the building. At some point down the road, if Health has no use for that building, it will be put back in the government inventory for other uses. Thank you.

Actually, we were spending $2.2 million on the treatment centre, but we have $6 million on community counselling and we have in and around $12 million coming from the federal government in the Wellness Fund. So that’s money that’s going into the wellness of people. So it’s actually not one-tenth or 20 percent of what we’re spending on fires, it’s more than that. Thank you.

Treating people in southern institutions is not a new thing. Treating people in southern institutions is not something that happened because Nats’ejee K’eh shut down. This is something that was ongoing. Individuals have come to us and have gone for treatment while Nats’ejee K’eh was still operating, have gone for treatment in the South. How the department selected this is after working with the various treatment centres down south, they looked at the places they felt would best suit our needs for the people of the Northwest Territories and had signed contracts at four treatment facilities down...

On average, long-term care is about $100,000 per year per senior, so that was why. I just did the math, so 10 seniors would be $1 million for one year.