Tom Beaulieu

We do recognize it. The department is monitoring the fact that we’re expecting an increase of 44 percent from this year, once we project to the end of the year over last year. There are definitely things that have to occur, and those things are, again, trying to work with the communities and trying to really pinpoint where the issue is greatest. We know that in the Tlicho Community Services Agency we are working closely with them to address the issue of our high rates of MRSA in that region. Any area where we consider there to be high rates by community, we will work closely with them to try...

By knowing where the incidents are and monitoring this infection, we are in a sense, I guess, tracking. That is what is happening. We also are projecting to see if we can predict what is happening and try to do some prevention work. We are continuing to examine the patterns and the causes of this infection through the NWT, by monitoring the cases that are being reported. Thank you.

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.

The whole plan is all about prevention. We are trying to help people to sober up so that they lessen their use of the health system. What we think is common knowledge is that sober people are healthier, and there are serious problems with alcohol and that it has a heavy price tag on the health system. Generally, the way we view this is that the nature of the whole action plan is going to be on prevention. Thank you.

In the action plan, detoxification, I think, is the first gap that is identified in there. Our intention is to try to have people go through detoxification without necessarily building infrastructure for them to do it in. I think the intention would be to go to more programming than anything. Also, we have some confidence that if an individual wants to quit using drugs or quit using alcohol, that they will stop and go through their own personal detoxification. We have to have some confidence that people that wish to quit drinking, will quit drinking, and that at some point down the road they...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The intention of this forum initially was to have the forum around December, depending on how much information we are able to gather. Although we thought we had a structure in mind on the forum, now we’re considering the deliberations that have occurred during Committee of the Whole and we’re looking at maybe changing the structure of the forum at this time.