Tom Beaulieu

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This is where I had indicated earlier of working upstream. We’re trying to work in the intervention, to try to ensure that addictions that people are facing, and mental health issues that people are facing, that they do not face those issues by us trying to prevent that from happening. Our intention, again, is to look at increasing our budgets in the area of prevention, hopefully working with children and so on at a young age and also dealing with youth. We think that that type of approach of making the youth and the children aware of the issues and so on, and then as...

The intention is to continue to work with the health and social services authorities. If the Beaufort-Delta has a backlog, then our intention would be to support them from outside the Beaufort-Delta to try to get the backlog dealt with. Again, like I said, we would try to do some out-of-territory counseling, if necessary, and hopefully deal with the backlog. Thank you.

Yes, the intention of the Department of Health and Social Services is to move to prevention. Right now the Department of Health has a small budget in promotion and prevention.

The intention and the direction that I have given the department has been to increase the amount of money we are spending on prevention, and specific to some of the communities where there is a high incidence of addictions and mental health. The plan is to go into the schools to start at the youngest age possible, to work with the kids and so on, and also working with the health professionals at the community level, and...

I’ll have the department put that information together for the Member and provide it.

As I indicated, in McPherson we have a lot of people over the age of 60, many of which do require home care. There are 132 people in the community that require home care, so Beaufort-Delta Health and Social Services Authority are looking at ways now how to enhance that service, recognizing they only have one home care worker who can’t possibly service all those people. So we have asked them to look at it and they are looking at it.

In Tsiigehtchic at this time – and we can take another look at it, I’m not saying we won’t look at it – we have 20 people over the age of 60, and there is some need...

The department is doing a review of the Nats’ejee K’eh Treatment Centre at this time. I’m expecting to be reviewing the report within the next couple of months. In as far as expecting that we have to have people fail at Nats’ejee K’eh before we send them elsewhere, I’m not sure that’s a policy of this government. What I do know is that we do have a committee that looks at out-of-territory placements for addiction issues that cannot be addressed at a treatment centre at Nats’ejee K’eh.

The department is looking at that now. We have already had communications from the Member that this was an issue. We looked into the storage of the food, the country foods and so on. I’ve asked the department, specifically Health and Social Services, to look into that issue at this time.

Yes, as the Member responsible for Seniors that is my intention, is to work with the Department of Education on the Seniors Fuel Subsidy Program. Sometimes – the Member is right – the individuals are living with the elder and supporting the elder, but because the policy indicates that they need to have a Revenue Canada form filled out to determine their income, the individual senior loses the fuel subsidy. Also in public housing, sometimes the seniors who are eligible for no rent in public housing will sometimes end up paying rent when they’re getting support from their family.

As the Minister...

Some of the organizations that I spoke of do deal with the fact that individuals, prior to attending treatment, have to essentially be alcohol or drug free for several weeks prior to attending. There’s also a program in the Sally Ann where there’s a withdrawal management system. There’s a unit there that individuals go, to go through withdrawal. With those programs, the intention is to use individuals that are serious about coming to treatment to deal with their issues, they go there, they remain essentially drug free or alcohol free for a certain period of time before they go for treatment...

The department is spending about $6 million on mental health and addictions. In the city of Yellowknife the department is supporting programs and the Tree of Peace for addictions programs at the Sally Ann, at the John Howard Society. As far as straight detox goes, at this time we have a ward at the hospital, which is not specific to addictions, but does include addictions. Then there’s also the Nats’ejee K’eh Centre in Hay River that’s there for the treatment of people with addictions. Right now that unit is running at about 50 percent capacity each time they have an intake. Thank you.