Tom Beaulieu

Within that action plan and also a commitment from the government that we would look at more treatment in existing infrastructure, we will be asking in the action plan that a Minister’s forum be struck on well-respected people within the addictions and mental health field to travel to the communities and see first-hand what is required. We are going to be supporting that forum with a request through a supplementary appropriation of about $300,000 so that they can gather and hear firsthand from the communities what is needed. We believe, from our initial travels, that there is a requirement or...

Right now the residential treatment that is being offered is individual treatment. They used to have couples treatment, but it was decided by the facility that they would be better off to have individual treatment, gender treatment, actually. Right now we don’t have residential family treatment available, with the exception of something that could occur on the land. It appeared as though in the communities when we travelled and heard first hand that the communities felt that a solution could be to have families, several families, in fact, going out on the land and going to that type of on-the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We recognize that a lot of the truth and reconciliation in residential schools have become a very high-profile issue in the government. The department is putting together the action plan that we’re going to be rolling out in the next two years. In addition to that, we have about $6 million, a little over $6 million in the Community Counselling Program. We have one residential treatment facility that’s still operating and we also have about a million dollars or a little over targeted into the communities for aftercare and also for on-the-land programs, if that’s...

Although the births that are originating and most of the births are happening in Yellowknife, Inuvik, Fort Smith, Alberta and a few in other provinces, we are looking at the communities where the mother is from, the originating mother is from. The ones with the highest numbers in those but the births don’t actually occur there where they have to be transported to another community. Hay River is probably number one on the list for the mother originates from, the birth is originating from but actually do not have the actual birth in that community. Then we have other communities after that.

Submission will be in the business plan for 2013-2014 for the Midwifery Program.

That’s going to be up to this House on the amount of money that will be committed to it. We will be reviewing midwifery services in communities where a lot of births originate and which don’t actually occur in those communities. As an example, Hay River is one of the communities where there are many births originating but very few, if any, births at all that actually occur in Hay River. We’re looking at that type of a system to determine which midwifery program will come before the other.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There is no question from the department that midwifery would be an important part of the health system. The plan is to look at the Midwifery Program in the fiscal years of 2013-2014 to see where we could possibly put some midwives in position. We also have to do this in conjunction with a review of the physician services.

Right now the department, working with health and social services, is spending about $8 million targeted at treatment, mental health and addictions. But as people know in the House, a lot of that is for adult treatment; $2 million to Nats’ejee K’eh for adult treatment and $6 million to community counselling programs. That’s targeted to everyone, including youth. This is what we have. But the community wellness plans that we’re hoping to develop, that we will develop and that will complement our action plan, hopefully will identify ways that the community will see or advise us how they see...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There is a considerable amount of work that has to take place in order to use a piece of infrastructure specifically for a youth treatment facility. Like I indicated, almost 100 percent of the youth that attend treatment are forced into treatment. There’s not a whole lot of youth from the Northwest Territories that are going into treatment at this time. There’s not a whole lot of youth identifying themselves to have alcohol or drug addiction issues at this time. So until we have a program developed that addresses youth treatment, it is very difficult to commit to using...

The modern health centre in Hay River is scheduled to be completed 100 percent by 2015. We’re going to put into the capital plan, prior to that, the work that is going to be going into Woodland to expand Woodland to accommodate that. So in between I can see where the Member would indicate that there would be some gap. We will be discussing this further with the Members and also with the authority, the local health and social services authority, to close that gap so that people are not out in the cold and those people are accommodated right through the process so that there will always be...