Tom Beaulieu

We are looking to try to develop something at Nats’ejee K’eh. As I indicated, perhaps some treatment programs that would be built in in the summertime for youth.

Right now all of our youth that end up in treatment end up in treatment in southern placements. I think that the numbers of youth going to treatment, that type of treatment where they are placed in a southern treatment facility is very low. I think I at one time used the number five youth had gone to treatment over a two-year period from the Northwest Territories. So it’s difficult to build a program around that type of number, but we...

Mr. Speaker, as per our earlier discussions in the House, I have gone to see the board, Nats’ejee K’eh. I’ve met with the board at Nats’ejee K’eh. The board and the executive at Nats’ejee K’eh are sending a proposal into our department to look at different ways that they think they can deliver the addictions program at Nats’ejee K’eh to have greater success and also open up the options.

Currently, they have only men’s programs and women’s programs only. They don’t have youth treatment and so on. They were going to propose the various types of treatment, perhaps even family treatment, youth...

Mr. Speaker, no, we had not assessed H.H. Williams as a long-term care only facility. We had assumed that when the new health care was built, all of the services would leave the Hay River current H.H. Williams Hospital. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, the department is aware that the long-term care right across the Territories is a priority. We are doing various things like trying to get the current long-term care beds up to full staffing. Also, we are adding long-term care beds within the overall system.

Long-term care is a territorial program, so even though long-term care exists in Hay River, there are other long-term care beds where we are expanding. Yes, we are doing what we can to make sure that the department does understand that long-term care is a priority. Thank you.

The plan was always to make sure those long-term care beds did not disappear into the system. It was just not to put them into the hospital. In their current location, we can do an evaluation to see about the feasibility of keeping the long-term care beds in H.H. Williams up until the time when those beds are replaced.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I can write a letter to the Minister of Public Works and Services, asking that that unit be assessed for long-term care facility as opposed to being used as a hospital. It would still, I think, have to go through the capital plan. It would, in essence, be skipping over a process. But I can do that. I have no problem doing that.

Thank you. I do not have that information. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We’ve always known that there is a staff shortage of nurses right across the Territories. We also know that we have a separate governance system in every health and social services authority across the territory. We can’t share resources as though we have one single governing system with doctors or nurses the same. So the health authorities with their own governance system get the nurses in, they hire the nurses or they hire locums to fill in these positions. So in reality, the department is not specifically aware where and when the nurses are not going to be, although...

Mr. Speaker, that seemed to be the problem, that they had moved away from purely alcohol counselling to more of counsellors that have degrees in mental health and that they looked at a lot of this as mental health issues. It appears as though the communities that want to use Nats’ejee K’eh would like to see that become more of an alcohol counselling type of facility as opposed to a lot of the mental health counselling requirements that are now associated at Nats’ejee K’eh. That’s the exact review that we had asked the board to come back with, an alcohol type counselling versus something that...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We recognize that Nats’ejee K’eh is not operating at full capacity. There is no question about that. Also, the people do successfully complete Nats’ejee K’eh. We don’t have an instrument that’s going to determine whether or not the Nats’ejee K’eh graduates were fully successful in achieving their battle against addictions, because at which point do we measure success? Is it one year of sobriety? Five years? Or is it a lifetime of sobriety after that? We are trying to get a feel from the communities and the people that have gone through Nats’ejee K’eh, through the...