Thanks to the Minister. I appreciate the Minister’s explanation, but I have to disagree with his assessment because I don’t believe that you can separate the two. I think, by the forum and the Minister agreeing that there is a stigma on mental health, we are simply making it worse. I think, until we start talking about mental health and accepting that it is an issue, some people refer to it as a disease, but until we start bringing that to the fore and accepting that is a problem that we have, we won’t adequately deal with it. I think it’s unfortunate that the forum members wanted to remove that particular phrase and replace it with community wellness. I will just leave that as a comment.
My last question has to do with the Nats’ejee K’eh Treatment Centre in Hay River. It has been quite a while now. It has probably been since the 16th that Standing Committee on Social Programs members have been concerned about the usage at Nats’ejee K’eh. My understanding of the latest statistics, that Members received, it was anywhere from a 50 percent occupancy up to maybe 60 or 70 percent. I don’t believe it was any better than that. Sometimes it was less than 50 percent occupancy, from what I understand. I believe we have had conversations with the Minister about whether or not something will be done with that facility to bring the occupancy and the usage to a much higher percentage.
I would like to know from the Minister whether or not a review has been done. There was talk of a review probably at least a year or two years ago now. There was going to be an analysis of what the centre was currently doing, what we needed as a territory to deal with, what we needed in a treatment centre and how we were going to change the centre, and use it better and have a greater occupancy rate.
I’d like to know from the Minister whether there has been any review of the centre, whether there is any intention on the part of the department to try and revise the programming at Nats’ejee K’eh to make it better utilized by our people. Thank you.
Mr. Chairman, I find the questioning rather interesting since the Member indicated it was difficult to separate addictions and mental health and that Nats’ejee K’eh has moved solidly into the area of counselling mental health patients, and that the councillors have a background in mental health.
Knowing that, we looked at the amount of the capacity, I should say, of the individuals, the capacity of the building as they are doing their intakes. The capacity is actually around 46 and dropped to 43 percent, so lower than 50 percent in the last two fiscal years that we’ve looked at.
I met with the board. I went down to Hay River and met with the board. The board asked me if they would be allowed to develop a plan on how they think the program should work.
It’s a rather interesting thing because this is a long story. The need for Nats’ejee K’eh could be an essential part of the overall recovery of people with addictions issues. What they had asked was… We went in there and were basically of the thought that there was not much capacity and low success rate. And that is true. But the more we work with the department, within addictions of all of the communities and so on, the more we’re seeing a possible role for Nats’ejee K’eh, an important role for Nats’ejee K’eh.
One of the things we are doing in addition to allowing the community, that group, the Nats’ejee K’eh to develop a plan to provide to the department, is we’re going to move Nats’ejee K’eh from Deh Cho Health and Social Services under Health and Social Services, the department. Right now we are looking at it as perhaps an opportunity for addicts to go to Nats’ejee K’eh to get educated. We looked at it from that perspective.
I had discussions with other Members in here. They thought that might be an opportunity to use Nats’ejee K’eh to maximize Nats’ejee K’eh. Right now we’re thinking that we still come away with the understanding that addressing addiction issues is a personal responsibility, so that we can provide as many aids as possible to individuals, and Nats’ejee K’eh being one of those aids that we can provide to an individual to go through an intensive 28-day educational process on the harmful effects of alcohol and drugs.
Also, the Nats’ejee K’eh could be a complementary type of treatment to all of the other personal responsibilities, on the land treatment, supporting parents in the communities. Some of those ideas are initial ideas that we’re getting back from the Addictions Forum. Once we have that report, we’re going to be able to then, we think, slot Nats’ejee K’eh into the overall spectrum of addressing addictions.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Committee, we’re on page 8-31, and continuing on with questions I have Mr. Moses.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Actually, I had my questions focused around chronic disease management and dollars that are being allocated to that. However, the Minister did make a comment there to my colleague’s previous question and one of her concerns was why the Addictions Forum doesn’t contain mental health, and the Minister did mention that he feels that addictions is a personal responsibility. But when you get into the frontline work and you work with individuals that are battling addictions, and you sit down with people that are having a hard time and they can’t get out of the rut of addictions, a lot of it deals with mental health issues. A lot of it is more than just a personal responsibility.
Some of these guys need education; they need an education into personal life choices. You can’t just assume that because they’re a young adult, that they’re an adult or even an elder, that they can make those personal decisions on their own, or those choices. I think that’s where my colleague was trying to go with why we’re not focusing on mental health with addictions, because they do go hand in hand, and we just have to go down and walk into some of these communities where we’ll see people who are battling with addictions that need that extra support.
I don’t agree with the Minister’s comments that it comes down solely to personal responsibility because this government has a responsibility to offer those services to help those that need that help. If you go and talk to somebody who might be battling addictions, they don’t have the education, they might not have had education.
We’re going through a curriculum right now where we’re going back to residential schools. People’s lives are traumatized at an early age and they can’t make those decisions on their own. So I disagree with what the Minister had said to my colleague, and that is a personal responsibility because there are some people that can’t make that decision or choice on their own. So I just wanted to, for the record, state that, and I will make sure that there will be questions asked in the House and get it on for the record when we’re trying to help our residents of the Northwest Territories, because comments like that really do upset me, Mr. Chair.
Moving forward on to my initial questions and I’ll allow the Minister to respond to that comment. As well, I would like to get more clarification on his thoughts.
In the NWT, 70 percent of all deaths and more than 50 percent of the number of days spent in hospitals were related to chronic conditions. Also, I wanted to throw a couple more stats in there. Approximately 200 new cases of diabetes are diagnosed each year, which are a direct correlation to nutrition, active living and, as stated earlier today, that 63 percent of our NWT residents are overweight and obese. Then when you look at the chronic disease mortality rates, 23 percent are related to cardiovascular deaths. I want to know what the Minister is doing to decrease any one of these statistics that we see, that the public sees that we’ve got to be making plans to cut these down, whether it’s the 70 percent of all deaths, the number of hospitalizations related to chronic disease.
We’ve got to set performance measures. We’ve got 200 new cases of diabetes. How can we set a performance measure that next year we’ll only get 150? That would be success. Or even better, how do we not get any at all? That all leads to prevention and promotion, and that’s where we’re not focusing our dollars. How do we cut down on the 23 percent of cardiovascular deaths that we see each year?
I want to know what the Minister is doing and if he’s looking at providing more dollars into the prevention and promotion so that we can start addressing some of these issues that are clearly stated in the 2011 Health Status Report. I don’t want to get into asking him questions again if he’s read that report, or not because I’m doing my homework over here and I hope the Minister is doing his. He’s got a big stack, he’s got a big department and, honestly, I was just going to ask a nice question, but his comments to my colleague earlier really got me hot under the collar here. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Moses. For that we’ll go to Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I didn’t indicate that addictions was the responsibility, solely a personal responsibility. I’d indicated that addressing addictions was a personal responsibility and what we’re trying to do is to try to provide some supports, and mentioning the Nats’ejee K’eh would be one of those supports in addition to some of the community programs like on-the-land programs, also, in addition to some of the early findings of the forum of maybe addressing some parental issues, putting in programs to assist parents at the community level and so on.
So it wasn’t to take all the money out of trying to address issues with addictions and writing it off as a sole responsibility. That, I didn’t say. I said that it was a personal responsibility. A lot of people with addiction issues have gone to complete sobriety on their own. That, we know for sure. That’s a fact. Many individuals that have addressed the issue on their own are sober.
There are people that need assistance. That is true. If you’re into the counselling business you have people coming to you. The Community Counselling Program, we’re spending $6 million in the Community Counselling Program. We’re continuing that. We recognize that people come to get assistance, but if you make a personal choice to try to address your addiction issues, then all of the support that can be provided by the department, by the Community Counselling Program or any new programs that are recommended through the addictions forums, will all be aids in place to be able to help people address those issues.
Just on the management of chronic disease, I think what the Members are trying to get from the department is to zero in on having a specific Chronic Disease Management Strategy, but in reality it is throughout our work. If we develop a Chronic Disease Strategy, that’s okay, because it can refer to all kinds of programs that are in the system, but in our system the areas of prevention and promotion, which is an area where the Members don’t agree with the amount of money that we’re saying we’re putting into prevention and promotion. So we encounter that. We see prevention and promotion throughout the entire budget. We see chronic disease management throughout the entire budget. We’re looking at the whole area of anything to do where we’re working with like, one example is TAMI, Talking About Mental Illness. That program, as an example, is a program that we’re working on. So we’re not doing nothing at all, we’re working there. We have Mental Health First Aid, we’re putting money into mental health and addictions, we’re working on three separate pilots right now, a cancer strategy, healthy eating pilots, and renal is the other one. Then we’re piloting three, I guess, that we were going to use as a base, renal, diabetes – and I don’t remember the locations, but we could have the deputy provide the locations – and mental health.
There are lots of different things happening in the department. I go through a lot of reports that were there before I started. I don’t memorize the reports. I’ve got a huge job trying to move this department forward, trying to address the issues. I think issues that are important to the health of the people in the Northwest Territories. If Mr. Moses asks me questions specific to whether this is in the report or whether you read this report, he talked about several reports yesterday that he mentions again today. One of the reports I hadn’t heard of but the reporter had it. When the guy opened it up and showed me the consultation of it and so on, it was a bit different than the consultation that we’re doing under the forum that we’re doing now. I had indicated to him that we are trying to get more of a community, people going out there doing consultation with the communities and trying to develop something from that. It is costing a bit of money, $300,000, but we think that once we get that report and once we action the report, we will gain that money back in the long run.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Are you concluded? Just one more question I will allow for Mr. Moses.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I know that both comments were pretty long there, and I do understand the Minister does have a very big department and a lot of responsibility to be working with, he and his staff. When I do refer to reports I refer to it from a ground-level worker, which I’ve done for many, many years, and some recommendations when I left a conference or a workshop feeling good knowing that those recommendations were to be addressed or looked at and they never, ever did. Now that I’m in a position to see if we can try to get those addressed, I feel good about it because I’m saying stuff here now that I’ve been saying for the last 12 years sitting on committees at the ground level working with community members, people who have the challenges with the lack of funding trying to help people that they genuinely care about. So when I go to reports and talk about recommendations, I’m coming at it from a true working level from the ground level. I just want to make that comment to the reports.
Based on the stats, can I ask the Minister why we are piloting three projects when I listed all the stats, and the stats show that we need something concrete. We don’t need pilot projects; we need something concrete. Whether he’s going to allocate specific dollars on an ongoing, year-to-year fiscal budget process to address all these stats that I had mentioned earlier, and not keep them as pilot projects, and not focus on just three communities, but try to find a way to make it a territorial project that addresses all residents of the Northwest Territories, and not just three communities in terms of piloting because it is an issue. I read out the stats earlier. People are dying. People are suffering. We can’t just go out and do a pilot project and say we might be able to help you out, we’ll see how these projects do first in these three communities. As we’ve said, all regions are different. Demographics are different. Costs of living are different throughout different regions. That’s just my question.
Thank you, Mr. Moses. For that we’ll go to Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We’re using pilot projects as exactly what they are, pilots. They will end, those projects. The information gathered from those programs, those specific programs would probably continue, but not as pilots. They would continue as the regular course of business that we do in the chronic disease management.
As a result of those projects, we’re going to be able to expand into other programs we’re seeing that we need to address the chronic disease issues. We know that initially when we forge into this work, we do the same thing too. We look at the stats. That’s what we use as a starting point. We know that diabetes is growing at 200 persons per year in the Northwest Territories. We know that diabetes is higher among Aboriginal people than it is among non-Aboriginal people. What we are doing is dealing with, really to address the diabetes issues, we’re saying exercise and eating healthy.
Then we talk about people that, when we talk about cancer, we’re talking about not smoking. We’re trying to get out there and work on prevention programs and smoking cessation programs. Also drinking. Heavy drinking seems to have a very negative impact on a person’s health. So we’re trying to address that issue, too, so we’re talking about that and that’s why we’re doing our addictions work and so on.
We are looking at the stats and trying to put programs into effect and dealing with the authorities, through the authorities, through social services, through the health authorities and so on, health and social services authorities, trying to address these issues, as well, by looking at the stats.
I don’t know if the trend has been where diabetes is growing by 200 persons per year in the Northwest Territories if we’re able to get people starting at the schools, trying to start at the schools, we thought that would be a good point to start healthy living, healthy eating and exercising. We’re able to curb the new diabetes in the Northwest Territories, if we can turn the curve down that would be something we want to achieve. Same with cancer. Cancer rates are very high. The various different types of cancer rates are very high, so we’re trying to address those issues by developing a cancer strategy, by piloting that through two communities in the Northwest Territories.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. We’re on page 8-31; however, before we continue, I’m going to ask committee members, as well as the department, if we could just tighten up the questions a little bit and maybe tighten up the answers a little bit as we can move on this activity summary. Moving on with questions I have Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is a page where, obviously, prevention is big. We’ve talked about it on just about every topic that comes up and I just want to stress, again, that that’s often where I’m coming from. I know the Minister is too.
I view early childhood development programming as the number one opportunity we have in prevention. We have Dr. Corriveau with the Minister’s department working away on a framework. I hope we’re going to come up with a really community-based focus on young families, that sort of approach. We have what we have for resources and as we really go to implementation, we will expand those resources. It has to be done well and intelligently and so on. Wherever the Minister sees an opportunity to support that work, I hope he will do that.
My question, just on the Child and Family Services Act and the previous report, I know the Minister is seriously interested and concerned in that area and has attempted to get community child and family services committees up and running and has found it to be challenging. He’s going to continue to focus on seeing that. All other Ministers we’ve had over the last six or eight years have had that same challenge. What are we doing, what is the focus on implementing the recommendations, both in terms of on-the-ground programs and in terms of the act? Can the Minister – I don’t know if he would have this information – give us an update on what number of children we have in care in the Northwest Territories and outside of the Northwest Territories? Let’s back off the specifics and go to the trends. Are the trends increasing or decreasing in those couple of parameters? I’ll start with that.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. We’ll just give the department a minute to retrieve that. Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We have the numbers of the children that were apprehended. Actually, I guess better yet, the children that are working with the child and family services people or a social worker. Some of them are in a voluntary agreement with the family and some are placed in foster care. We do have a total – I’ll just need to bring this a little bit closer. I would pick a date, Mr. Bromley, because it changes all the time. As of November 30, 2012, we had 582 children receiving services. Of that, 356 of those children were receiving services like counselling, respite services, at the request of parents. Parents do not lose custody of these children of that group. Some are in the custody of foster care but the majority, I guess, 61 percent of the children receiving services are receiving services in their home.
Then we do have the trends as well here, but we’re just pulling up the information. We have so much information here we need to locate the information.
Maybe I could talk a bit about our work with trying to develop child and family services. We had one committee, that committee quit functioning. We’re trying to get that committee up and running again. The community has actually asked that committee be functional again. We had gone to beginning the work in the recommendations of the Child and Family Services Act review, and that recommendation was to try to place child and family services committees in all of the communities where there were children that were receiving services. We were not able to do that. It is my opinion that it would be a matter of sustaining the pressure, I suppose, on the communities to try to get them to come up with a committee from the Department of Health and Social Services or from the health and social services authorities across the territory. An example, I went into the Sahtu, I guess a year after the recommendations were made, and there was no work done on developing the child and family services committees but there was work done in Healthy Families, another recommendation. Which we had direct control over as a department, the money is coming through the department and that was one of the other key members.
As far as the 73 recommendations within that report, what I think we would have to do is show a response to the report. We recognize that in some places we’d have to do the change in the act in order to carry out the recommendations. Some of the recommendations we have acted on and carried out. We can provide that report but it would be difficult to go through each recommendation in this forum. Our information here, the statistics show that there is a very slight decrease in children receiving services from Social Services.
I realize that there are a whole lot of aspects to this subject and so it’s not possible to discuss it all in this format. Maybe just one last question. The Minister will recall the recommendations that we move from a confrontational, almost legalistic approach, to a more dispute resolution, negotiation counselling approach. Has the Minister found opportunities to work in that direction in the area of child and family services?
The department has provided training to the workers but we’re looking for the specifics of that training, or we can also provide, I suppose we can provide that. We can continue to look for it and then provide the information further on down or provide it in writing, one way or the other. But the department has done some training with the social workers.
Committee, we’re on page 8-31. Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just to follow up on Mr. Bromley’s questions on the child and family services committee and the response back from the committee’s recommendations on social programs from Minister Miltenberger, they talked about the communities wishing to play a role in the Child and Family Services Act. However, the current structure of the committee doesn’t support that. Is that still the case today, in regard to removing this barrier, so that communities can set up their child and family services committees? I know that was a really good initiative when the Minister and I went in there. What happened?
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. For that we’ll go to Minister Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The act is specific in one area that the Member may be referring to. I will have the deputy minister just talk a bit about the specifics of that act and whether or not we have made changes there to remove that specific barrier.
Thank you, Minister Beaulieu. Ms. DeLancey.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’m not sure if this is what the Member’s referring to, but my understanding is that the act is somewhat restrictive in terms of what community body actually has the authority to establish a child and family services committee. In our consultations with communities, this was seen as a barrier, so we are looking, in reviewing the act, at ways to make that more flexible, but there has been no change to that to date.
Thank you, Ms. DeLancey. Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you for the clarification, Deputy Minister. That is my point here. When? Because the Minister and I toured the Sahtu and people were quite excited about having this child and family committee set up, and we’re finding that that’s not the case today. Is there anything in the plans that we’re going to rectify this issue and continue on with some of the great things that the previous government heard about apprehension of children and how the community can be involved in removing those barriers? Can I ask the Minister as to when this is to be expected? Maybe we have to go back in the Sahtu and do a round two on this issue here.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Minister Beaulieu.
We are on track to submitting a legislative proposal to amend the act in this fiscal year as a result of that 2011 review. One of the key amendments in the act is to remove some of the barriers that the communities had encountered in the development of child and family services committees.
That gives me some hope that we’re working towards some of the wishes of the community. I want to ask the Minister, in regard to the Sahtu, because I know some of the communities were quite keen, and I’m not too sure if they’re going to get stung once, and I don’t know if they want to get stung twice. Those are…(inaudible)…in those communities, because that’s what we told them when we went there and now they’re kind of figuring out if we should really trust the government on this issue here. I’m going to ask the Minister to, again, put together this piece of work that would see the Child and Family Services Act serve the people and take down the barriers that are preventing them from being part of something that the 16th Legislative Assembly heard in their consultation with the communities.
I would commit to giving very clear direction to the authorities that we would like to strike the child and family services committees. The Member and I had travelled together in the Sahtu and they were very, very clear on exactly what it is they wanted. They wanted to make sure that the children of their community continued to reside in their community. Their issue was that they felt that once a committee was put together, that they would be able to develop some foster homes within the community and place the kids within the foster homes, and that they had the knowledge and they knew their children. They were very unhappy that children were down south and in Yellowknife. At the time the Member and I travelled together, there were children from the Sahtu in BC, Alberta and in Yellowknife and the community was extremely unhappy. They had a fairly high incidence of child protection issues as well. The three communities of Good Hope, Deline and Tulita all had approximately the same number of children receiving services.
The community did ask us to find a way, remove the barriers so that they could have a committee, and it appeared as though those barriers were there. If it means a legislative proposal to make an adjustment to the Child and Family Services Act quickly, then that’s what we want to do. Meanwhile, though, we want to be able to try to work with what we have to be able to try to put those committees in place.
I will make it a mandate of mine to go back to the authorities. If I have to travel back to the authorities again to have this discussion, then that’s what I wish to do. In addition, I will also commit to talking to the Joint Leadership Council, which is the chairs and the public administrators of the authorities, and put this item on the agenda to talk about ways of trying to create these committees.
Mr. Chair, I look forward to the Minister’s provision on the piece of work that we just finished talking about.
I have one final question. When they’re done with the community consultation on addictions that, yes, people went out to the different regions and communities, does the Minister and his department look at, from those consultations and recommendations, something that he would have in place and plan with his department to implement some recommendations or direction from Paul Andrew and his people coming back to us and report this is what the people are saying? Nats’ejee K’eh’s on-the-land programs, youth or whatever, family programs, we don’t know what they’re saying. We kind of understand a little bit of what they’re saying. Maybe that is the new shift of wellness in the North. Is that something that the Minister is going to advocate on our behalf, to say we have Minister Miltenberger, who probably knows the number of days left in this House, do we have the will and the guts to move this into place where the people are saying we’ve have been heard, we see it. I will leave it at that, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Chairman, the timeline for us responding to the forum’s report is we’re going to try to do a roll-up of their recommendations in April, and then during the May-June sitting of this Legislative Assembly, we are hoping to be able to present, and that’s again targeted to do it at that time to present the recommendations and how we see those recommendations fitting into our Mental Health and Addictions Action Plan and moving forward to address those issues that are identified by that forum.
Thank you, Minister Beaulieu. Page 8-31, Health and Social Services, activity summary, community wellness and social services, operations expenditure summary, $89.259 million. Does committee agree?
Agreed.
I will combine 8-32 and 8-33 together. Health and Social Services, activity summary, community wellness and social services. Mr. Bromley.
Thank you. Very quickly, Mr. Chair, the Minister mentioned the $175,000 going to the Yellowknife homeless day shelter. That’s an increase, I believe, in recognition of the pulling out of another partner, but the City of Yellowknife has very graciously put in extra dollars on the condition that the dollars that they’re putting in are met by this government. Does this amount, $175,000, meet the conditions and thereby enable the City of Yellowknife to contribute their full amount? Do we know offhand? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Because there hasn’t been a change in what the contractor is providing in there, and that we’ve been offering with the specific budget for the last fiscal year only, and it’s just from that one source now, ourselves, but in addition to what the city is providing, but then we are taking over for what BHP was providing, so there is no change in the programming. We understand, from our initial discussions with the John Howard Society, that this would be sufficient to carry on for another fiscal year.
Thank you, Minister Beaulieu. Okay, committee. We are on 8-32 and 8-33, combined pages. Health and Social Services, activity summary, community wellness and social services, grants and contributions, grants, total grants, $443,000. Mr. Yakeleya.
Just before we leave the community services, the Minister may be aware of the increase of oil and gas activities and the justice stats. They have been increasing. Clearly, that is going to happen.
I want to ask the Minister what type of response he is going to plan for the Sahtu in terms of the alcohol use, possibly family violence, that show the Minister the increase in the crime stats related to alcohol. It’s going up in all the five communities. I want to know how we are going to support our health centres, our nurses. We do need additional staff, as the other Ministers have identified, certain personnel to be into the Sahtu. I heard from the Minister the other day that at that time they weren’t concerned about any type of additional support. I would ask the Minister to reconsider and re-evaluate the situation in our region. It’s going to get busy. So far we have seen the criminal stats that say it’s going to get busier. So what do we do? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Minister Beaulieu.
Mr. Chair, the plan was to continue to work with the CEO, then the CEO continues to work with the health centres that may be impacted. Based on the actual impact on the health centres in as far as the number of health concerns or health issues that are brought to the health centres, or a number of social services type of issues that come to the forefront in her dealing with social workers within the communities and within her region, we will have that discussion with her again to ensure that, although we are having discussions with her, I think we were waiting for her to come with a case to say that we need more attention placed here, more attention placed there. What we would do is, we will commit to having contact with the CEO at Sahtu Health and Social Services Authority and run through each of the health centres, each of the social services operations at the community level to see if there is a change in there and change that we are unable to address with the current staff complement.
Fair enough, Mr. Chair. The Minister laid out a reasonable process and path to argue for additional staff. He has to go to the Cabinet and the Financial Management Board. You have to justify.
I believe some information that the Minister has on the criminal activity with justice, I’m not too sure how that closely relates to the health centres or medical service or social services types of work. We need some kind of baseline, I guess. I would again encourage the Minister to keep in contact.
I am going to go back into the Sahtu and I will hear people on the streets talking about it. I may even talk to some of the nurses there to see how they’re doing with the window of opportunity, oil and gas activity and see if there were impacts. It might quiet down after. We don’t know. We might begin with the residue after the companies are gone out and the big cheques are coming into the communities once in a while. I will leave it at that. I will take the Minister’s word on that, that he’s going to continue monitoring them. If there is a good case to put more to the Financial Management Board for additional support, then I am with the Minister 150 percent.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Members, we are on 8-32, 8-33, Health and Social Services, activity summary, community wellness and social services, grants and contributions, grants, total grants, $443,000, contributions, total contributions, $70.955 million, total grants and contributions, $71.398 million. Does committee agree?
Agreed.
Thank you, committee. Page 8-34, Health and Social Services, information item, community wellness and social services, active positions. Any questions?
Agreed.
Page 8-35, Health and Social Services. Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just one question here with regard to deficits for authorities. Over the years that I’ve been here, we’ve had a number of authorities which have been in deficit on a regular basis. Yellowknife Health and Social Services Authority is one, Stanton is another one and, I believe, the Beau-Del Health and Social Services Authority is also basically underfunded. I know that the department is working, particularly with regard to Stanton, to try and revise how they’re funded to try and determine which activities should be done by Stanton and which should not. My first question is: Which of our health and social service authorities will be in a deficit position in this fiscal year? Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. For that we’ll go to Minister Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The answer is all of them.
Thanks. To the Minister, well that’s very clear. My next question then is: What plans does the department have to make sure that these authorities will not continue to be in deficit year, after year, after year, after year? Thank you.
