Tom Beaulieu

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The NWT Seniors’ Society does come together on a regular basis. Many of the communities do have seniors’ societies. I think this type of work is something that, interestingly enough, the Stanton Elders’ Council is interested in doing. They talked about this in the context of the health of the community and how they have a strong desire to have an elders' conference, bringing all the elders together headed by the Stanton Elders’ Council to one central location and having a discussion to talk about this. In addition to that, they’ve also asked that they meet with our...

Mahsi cho, Mr. Speaker. [Statement delivered in an Aboriginal language and then in English.]

Today I would like to pay tribute to the late Beatrice Dawson, originally from Rocher River. Beatrice and her late husband, Fred, moved to Fort Resolution, like many other families, in the late ‘50s when the school in Rocher River burned down.

Beatrice and Fred had no children of their own but helped raise six kids. Two of the six passed away years ago. They were Shirley Overvold-King and the late Phillip “Wagee” King. Beatrice helped raise her step-daughter Jackie Pascal from Fort McPherson, adopted...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Department of Health and Social Services recognizes that we don’t have the facility to match all the situations in the Northwest Territories in the appropriate locations. So we’re developing a system called Continuum of Care for Seniors, and within that care we are looking at, first, all the possibilities of keeping individuals in their home as long as possible; secondly, working with the NWT Housing Corporation to develop assisted living inside the senior citizen’s home that they own and operate; thirdly, going into long-term care at the regional levels; then...

The information I have is that the largest number of claims, not based on change in the percentage, but the largest number of claims is at Stanton where there’s a hospital; the Beaufort-Delta, where there’s a hospital; Fort Smith where they have a health centre and acute care. So all of those areas have successfully passed accreditation by Accreditation Canada. So they have the standards, they’re good standards, they meet the standards and this ensures that there is rigorous safety procedures in place. A big part of passing that accreditation is to have those types of safety procedures in...

Mr. Speaker, in my travels across the Northwest Territories, meeting with communities, attending assemblies and numerous board meetings, I have heard one constant theme: Addictions are destroying our families and communities.

This government spends millions of dollars on addictions services, but our people are still drinking in large numbers.

Almost every family in the NWT is touched by alcohol addiction. I will not deny that drugs and pharmaceutical abuse is an issue, but alcohol is the drug that is breaking apart families, keeping young people from doing well in school and preventing many...

Yes, we will pass that information on to the forum. I guess many people on the forum may be listening to us today discuss this, but that can be something that we will put into the system. We will encourage people who are currently suffering from alcoholism to attend the forums. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, I am aware of the situation. We are doing what we can to address the situation with the extra costs and so on, recognizing that providing health care service in an environment like a hospital is a lot different than maybe other departments that are operating from 8:30 to 5:00. Thank you.

I have to think it will be successful or I wouldn’t be doing this. I think the success is there because the recommendations are going to be from the communities. When we travel into the communities, communities say government doesn’t listen to them. That’s what we want to do. We want to listen to the people. We want to listen to all people.

I mean, there’s one forum that’s going to be dealing with just Yellowknife and Hay River. Because of the size of the city, we’re going to try to do a system where we’re going to sit down with them and ask the people on the forum how would they recommend that...

The Member may know that our drugs are handled by Alberta Blue Cross. We have gone to them, looked at them and they’re a large organization that we deal with. They have made recommendations to the Department of Health and Social Services on how to improve our systems, recommendations that will go into the overall pharmaceutical strategy. I’m not sure if that work included a look on their initial recommendations. They looked at the best practices across the country. For sure, when we develop the pharmaceutical strategy, we are going to look at best practices across the country. Thank you.

We know that the general right direction is to try to reduce the amount of alcohol that’s being consumed across the territory in the communities. That is fairly general. We’re hoping that we’re not going to get 33 different types of recommendations or sets of recommendations from the communities. Firstly, we’re probably going to go into about 18 to 20 communities. Secondly, there are going to be four or five different groups. I guess, one, two, four different groups that are going to be travelling. They’re going to have a little different set of skills that they’re going to bring to the table...