Tom Beaulieu

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The department will do an evaluation of this fiscal year, but it’s not going to wait until the very end of the fiscal year to do an evaluation. We’ll evaluate as we go along to see if some of those programs, like I had indicated earlier, a navigator service to see if there are individuals in there that can find employment or find education and so on. Once that evaluation is done, we still have time prior to the next budget review of main estimates and the finalization of budgets for the 2013-14 budget year which will happen, I guess, this coming January. That will be...

Mr. Speaker, like I indicated, we will fund it for the rest of this fiscal year. That still gives us an opportunity to evaluate and get some funding into the shelter, if that is the decision we make beyond March 31, 2013.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Department of Health and Social Services, through the YK Health and Social Services Authority, is contributing their $125,000, plus are now contributing the share that used to be contributed in a three-year pilot project by BHP for $50,000, for a total of $175,000. That money will run to the end of the 2012-13 fiscal year, at which point we will re-examine our position. Thank you.

Laid out in the Mental Health and Addictions Action Plan was the attempt to try to remove the stigma of mental health so that individuals are able to work freely with people who are afflicted with mental health issues. It’s a very, very difficult area.

As the Member indicated, you can’t just, you know, if somebody gets hurt, a physical injury, people know what to do. There’s a certain process. You get the person into the hospital. Mental health cases are different.

We are trying to train people. We are trying to set up a system where individuals are able to identify mental health. We’re trying...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Mental Health First Aid course is something that our department is offering to professionals from the regions and communities, that they go back to their communities to put on workshops on mental health that would be open to the citizens, teachers, anybody that wishes to learn more about mental health issues at the community or regional levels.

Mahsi cho, Mr. Speaker. The department is doing their business of advising the local housing authorities through the chief public health officer. The chief public health officer is discussing the clinical practice guidelines with the authorities on what needs to be done to address this virus, the MRSA. That’s the work we are doing right now. The public health officer is working with the authorities to get the information out to the communities.

I think there are a few questions there. What we’re doing is we’re bringing these individuals together. We’ve appointed an overall chair of the groups. We have one group that is going to do the Beaufort-Delta. We have another group that is going to do the Sahtu and Tlicho communities. We have another group that’s going to do Deh Cho and South Slave, and we have another group that’s going to do Hay River and Yellowknife. They’re going to get together and they’re going to determine what the best action would be to go out into the communities to gather information. At the end of all of their...

No. The only people that have the power to determine capital infrastructure is this House.

I don’t think there is any issue with the department tabling a report. I think we want to take a look at it to have a discussion with ABC on the recommendations that they made. They made some recommendations specifically to why they feel that the pharmaceutical expenses are so high in the Northwest Territories. So we need to have that discussion with them. We’d like to have that discussion with ABC one time before we do a tabling of the report.

I can commit to saying that we will have that discussion to ensure that the information in their recommendations made is based on information that is...

I don’t have the actual recommendations from ABC with me here today; however, I do know that the plan is not to continue any work on the pharmaceutical strategy until after the end of this fiscal year due to other priorities in the department.