Robert Hawkins
Déclarations dans les débats
Mr. Speaker, while I quickly ran upstairs to type a written question, my office was contacted again by someone else who had another unhappy experience at the Thebacha College, which I referenced.
Mr. Speaker, the point is — I hope it is being well made — that there is something strange going on there, and the fact is that if students are not feeling safe or their safety is being put in jeopardy in any way, I hope that message is being to delivered to the Minister of EC&E.
Mr. Speaker, with all that I’ve said right now, will the Minister be willing to put this so-called review on pause just so...
Mr. Speaker, I heard nothing about review of students past and present to find out about the students’ safety. I heard nothing about — if I may quote from the Minister’s statement today: “Students are most successful when they have many supports….” I want to make sure we're supporting our students.
Would the Minister be willing to make sure that the terms of reference are provided to Members? Would the Minister be willing to accept more questions as to what type of survey questions should be out there, just to make sure that we're doing the right kind of review at this time?
Mr. Speaker, in my Member’s statement today I spoke of the Thebacha Campus in Fort Smith and the fact that we may not be meeting all the needs of our Northern students. It really is a question of safety and effectiveness. We cannot have a 67 per cent drop in our trades program without that raising a warning flag.
I’ll go a little further and say that we had a Social Worker program offered in that community. For two years in a row it had little or no attendance. It had to be cancelled and was moved to Yellowknife. There it was picked up, and it’s being subscribed to quite fully.
My question...
Mr. Chairman, I move that $500,000 be deleted from the Interim Appropriation Detail booklet amount set out in Schedule 2, Capital Investment Expenditures, item No. 4, Health and Social Services, page 6, for the project Health Care Centre, Fort Smith.
Interjections.
Mr. Speaker, I highlighted a number of good places that treat addictions, and they do follow-up. In Minnesota my office has spoken to people at Aftercare Services Agency, and they do follow-up treatments. Bellwood highlights and red-flags people that they need to continue to follow-up through phone calls.
Mr. Speaker, has Health and Social Services in any way done any type of analysis on how much good a follow-up treatment program would do for people by a mere phone call?
I’m glad the Minister understands it clearly that I in no way am suggesting to change the shape of the licence plate; it’s only the tagline. My concern is that it’s not happening soon enough. The issue, I can clearly hear, has good buy-in, but it’s not moving fast enough.
My question really is: when can we see some results of this work? When can we expect to be able to see cars driving around the Northwest Territories that say “spectacular” on the back of them? When can we see that work?
We again seem to be reading from a different letter, because the letter I have here says that they have to take individual responsibility, that it’s basically up to the individual. This one-way letter continues to cite exactly the opposite of what the Minister says; although the letter says that if they want to call, it even provides a phone number.
Would the Minister re-evaluate her department’s position on this? I’m telling you: everything she says referencing that it’s a two-way communication process is not in this letter.
Well, you know what? Maybe the problem is solved because there must be two different letters. My two-page letter says: “It is Poundmaker’s practice to make follow-up calls directly with their clients, partly as a way to evaluate their programs and the outcomes…. Community staff” — referring to the G.N.W.T. — “do not consider this follow-up call to be part of the aftercare program.”
That is exactly the opposite of what the Minister just said.
Why is the follow-up call not considered part of the aftercare program, and would this Minister stop being stubborn and say, “We’ll look into this, and we...
Mr. Speaker, as always, I try to regularly make special mention that it is Red Friday.
Today I feel compelled to speak again to the issue of aftercare and follow-up for clients with addictions. I must confess that I am perplexed by the Minister’s answers to the questions earlier this week. A finer defence of the status quo I’ve never seen. As the Minister stated, individual responsibility is a major component of recovery in healing from addiction. I do not disagree with that statement. What I find puzzling is the Minister’s harsh resistance to what seems like a simple, inexpensive yet...
Mr. Speaker, this only begs one more element to this combination. Obviously it’s nice to see a Minister working with a Member and hearing the cries from this side of the House — and hasn’t forgotten us, by the way. But I’d just like the reassurance from the Minister that he will include the N.W.T. Tourism Association in on this as well as, as he had mentioned, the Minister of ITI. Finally, would he make sure I’m included in some type of release when they do this? Thank you.