Tom Beaulieu

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.

Yes, this department would be prepared to deal with Housing, Education and the Income Support Program, housing programs, public housing programs, so that we can prioritize the counseling needs at the community levels. Thank you.

The intention is to fill the vacancies of the mental health and addiction workers that are currently in place. Right now there are vacancies which are causing the backlog, and the intention is to move some of those people, if necessary, to out-of-territory options in order to get the counseling necessary for the individuals. But a key is to try to fill the vacancies, which we are having some difficulty doing at this time. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The intention of the department is to continue with the Community Counselling Program, trying to address some of the wellness services in the community, increase the wellness services in the community, and also reviewing the Mental Health Act. The department is waiting for the release of the national mental health report from the Canadian Mental Health Commission. I will be attending the National Mental Health Summit in Winnipeg in February as a part of the release of that commission report. Thank you.

I don’t know the specifics of how Nats’ejee K’eh deals with various addictions. All addictions and all individuals with addictions are pretty independent and very individualistic. Some people who have those issues can be assisted at the treatment centre in Hay River. However, some can’t. That’s why we have the out-of-territory placement committee and they will review those so that if there are people with addictions, that option is available to them to apply for a treatment facility outside of the Territories, and we have a committee that will look at that.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Recently, Health and Social Services closed the Joe Greenland building down and then retained over $400,000 of the funding that’s used to operate the facility there in home care. The intention now is to hire two more additional home care workers for Aklavik and we are now also looking at Fort McPherson, 132 people over the age of 60 in Fort McPherson and some of which need home care and there’s only one home care worker in Fort McPherson. So the Beaufort-Delta Health and Social Services Authority is looking at that situation right now to determine the need, the exact...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As indicated, the Member is referring to addictions. The intention is to move to prevention. That is different. We are tripling the amount of money that is focused in on prevention of addictions. That is different.

As the Member said, there’s a requirement for increase in home care, but it’s just one area where there could be a decrease if the elders were allowed to have family members. We agree, also, that family members staying with elders do prevent elders from going into long-term facilities, which are very expensive. The alternative I think that this government needs to look at and will be looking at, is to make sure that program policies that prevent elders from getting assistance in their homes because of the risk of losing programs that they should be getting, and subsidies that they should be...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Recently, I met with the NWT Seniors’ Society. We had a similar discussion. The seniors wished to be more involved with not just their own communities but to be involved with the whole territory. Representatives were there from all the communities. I indicated to them that this government was prepared to work. We are doing some intergovernmental work with the seniors and we are planning on trying to utilize the seniors and get their input as to what services they need at the community level.

Right now the department has some programs in place to address some of the problems. We are enhancing the Aftercare Program for addictions, and the closure of the addictions and detox centre, the closure of some of the treatment centres was something that happened in the past due to capacity, not the capacity of the department but the capacity of the treatment centres. All of the treatment centres at that time were operating with very few clients. The decision was made to roll it up into one centre and try to keep that centre full and operating as efficiently as possible.

At this time, even...