Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I thank the Member. That was a good statement that he had earlier.
Certainly, we need to be looking at what is happening in the Sahtu. I know I answered a number of questions today from Mr. Yakeleya regarding what is happening in the Sahtu. We need to look at opportunities. I mentioned to Mr. Yakeleya about the Economic Opportunities Strategy that is underway. I think it’s a good opportunity to put the concerns of the region of Nahendeh and the Sahtu on the table and see what we can do.
I know with Voisey’s Bay, I believe, it was after the mine was developed at Voisey’s Bay that ACOA had put a special economic zone in place at Voisey’s Bay. I don’t know if it was pre-development of that mine. I’d have to double check that.
Certainly, we’ve got a lot happening in the Sahtu, and I know the roads in the Member’s riding are being impacted and we really do need to pay special attention here. If there’s a way to develop the economy in both the Nahendeh and the Sahtu I think the most important thing is the agencies that are there aren’t tripping over themselves. I think there’s a possibility that if you get too many people involved in it, that’s not a good thing either. I think it has to be focused and it has to be action oriented in order to get results. I think we will get there. It’s early days.
We missed, of course, a huge opportunity during NWT Days, because this is a new and emerging issue for us to advise that the Sahtu is having impact on the region and our Northwest Territories. Will the Minister of ITI develop this strategy so that we can work with the federal government and let them know that we will need their assistance in developing impact funding for this region? Just like they committed $500 million for the pipeline, this is special development that is happening and if we can work towards developing some kind of strategy to get impact funding from the federal government.
I guess I’m very well situated in that I am the Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment and Minister of Transportation, and in the meetings we had with our federal counterparts in Ottawa, I, again, never miss an opportunity to let them know what is happening in the central Mackenzie, talk about it, talk about the need of a Mackenzie Valley all-weather road. Certainly, that is going to be front and centre.
We have a big project that we need to get construction started on. As soon as that is moved forward, our focus will certainly shift south to the central Mackenzie and we will take our best effort.
I mentioned earlier that we want to work with Regular Members on an approach with the federal government, and how we’re going to go about trying to work with industry and the federal government to get some more funding for the Mackenzie Valley Highway. We’ve had some success with CanNor. Thus far they’ve just recently given us a little bit more money to continue the momentum that we have there, so we’ll continue to work with CanNor and other partners on moving this whole thing forward.
Certainly, the other regions are getting their special projects, and it’s time now to use the momentum of the Sahtu play to develop the highways in the Nahendeh system and the Sahtu. Just with that focus, it’s not about taking away from other regions but about our government identifying that it is important, and to work with the federal government to identify a strategy for impact funding. Can the Minister work with his Cabinet colleagues to continue that momentum?
ITI certainly was working with the other departments. When you look at this year’s budget you’ll see a number of items in there specific to the Sahtu. That is a direct result of what is happening in the Sahtu.
The government has had to react and take action. Working with the other departments, we’ve identified areas where we need to be looking at putting more resources. We have done that.
I believe this is still relatively early days in the development of the Canol shale oil play. Those wells will be tested. If they have a commercial rate flow and get into production, that will change many, many things here in the Northwest Territories.
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Final supplementary, Mr. Menicoche.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Just to continue that momentum, if the ITI Minister will also work with his Cabinet colleagues that my riding of Nahendeh, Fort Simpson and Wrigley are being impacted, and that some resources will have to be identified for them as well.
As this all moves forward, I certainly look forward to working with the Member and the communities in Nahendeh to see how they’ve been impacted, and working with the government to try to find ways to get more resources there.
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. The honourable Member for Inuvik Boot Lake, Mr. Moses.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are also for the Minister of Health and Social Services. In the Mental Health and Addictions Action Plan: A Shared Path Towards Wellness, it states that the Department of Health and Social Services spends $9 million each year to support mental health and addictions, yet there are 11 service gaps that are presented.
I’d like to quote the Minister of Health and Social Services during the TLC, where he states, “When I speak to community health providers, there is a need for alcohol counselling, there is a need for treatment to be close to the people where the people live. We need to have those services at the community level and on the land where the people can work together in healing.” Yet this Minister sent the Minister’s Forum on the road at a cost of $300,000 and he didn’t feel that money could be spent better anywhere else.
My question to the Minister in that sense, some stuff that was laid out in the budget process, he did mention detox beds. Can I ask the Minister of Health and Social Services how many detox beds are there going to be in the Northwest Territories and where are they going to be located?
Thank you, Mr. Moses. The honourable Minister of Health and Social Services, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The determination of detox beds had come as a result of some questioning in the House here where we had determined that there are no detox beds available anywhere in the health care system. What that indicated then was that beds can be made available at the Stanton Hospital and the Beaufort-Delta hospital. What we will do is ensure that if somebody needs detox around those two centres, that detox beds can be made available to individuals for detoxification.
There are so many different areas from the budget address and what we’ve discussed in the past here, but the Minister did mention Yellowknife and Inuvik. With all the services that Yellowknife does have, even though it is a growing problem here in Yellowknife – and I appreciate that – I’d like to make a recommendation that we have one detox or two detox beds in the north and two in the south where we also have a lot of issues and concerns but don’t have the resources. Will the Minister commit to putting those detox beds, one or two detox beds in the north and one or two detox beds in the south? Will he commit to that?
I can commit to making beds available for detoxification, two in the North and two in the South.
It was really good news to hear that we did get the $1.15 million and the commitment, as well, into mental health and addictions, and it says that the money is going to be supported in the initiatives with the shared plan towards wellness. Was this $1.15 million allocated to this action plan in the initial budget before the budget dialogue process happened? Was that $1.15 million allocated in the initial budget?
In order to fully implement the action, the department would need, I think, $1.4 million ongoing for the three full years for the implementation of the action plan. Some of the action plan may indicate that we look at programs. Like the Member had indicated, we’re spending about $9 million in community counselling, residential treatment and so on. That could be part of the action plan as well, the programs that we currently have in place. But this is what we think we would need in order to fully implement the action plan for the next three years so that we actually complete the action plan.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Moses.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I do appreciate the challenges that we face. We do have an action plan here, and the action plan says we need action. How is he going to address this shortfall in funding so that we don’t continue to take care and treatment, rather that we can start making preventative measures sooner than later?
At the department we don’t think we have a shortfall in funding. We think that the action plan is something that would work within our current framework. The goals are to promote and understand awareness and acceptance for mental health. We focus on the person. We talk about improving availability and access to services, so the services that are available, we would try to make them more accessible to improve the efficiency of the services that we have in place. I think that’s going to save money, not cost us money. Some of those goals are what we’re looking at in this action plan.
As a department we are fairly comfortable that we’re moving forward with the money that we have and that there will be some results.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The honourable Member for Hay River North, Mr. Bouchard.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are for the Minister of Transportation. He has indicated that he had the opportunity to meet with the Minister of Transportation and Infrastructure when he was in Ottawa last week. I’m just wondering if he was able to get any commitment on cost sharing of the Tuk to Inuvik highway, the 75/25 for the complete cost of that construction.
Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. The Minister of Transportation, Mr. Ramsay.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. That question was raised with Minister Lebel when we had the meeting with him and it wasn’t confirmed nor denied whether they would be willing to look at 75/25. Our belief is that that will be the case. He didn’t say otherwise, so we’re going on that premise that it will be 75/25.
I’m just wondering, with the meetings with Minister Lebel, if there was discussion of other infrastructure such as the Mackenzie Highway and the potential of needing funds for that, and is the federal government interested in the responsibility for constructing roads on the Mackenzie Highway; specifically, the Sahtu area.
In other meetings we had with other federal Ministers, the subject of the Mackenzie Valley Highway did come up. Certainly, we let them know what was happening in the central Mackenzie in terms of the shale oil development there and the need for further infrastructure investment in our territory.
In terms of the discussion about dredging in the port of Hay River, that discussion did come up as well with the parliamentary secretary, Mr. Steven Fletcher.
The Minister must be reading my mind. My next question was about the port of Hay River and the dredging that the federal government is responsible for.
What is the next step in confirming some of this funding? We currently have no commitments from the federal government. What is the next step? Do we have another meeting planned with Minister Lebel to confirm some of these infrastructure dollars that we require?
First, with the Inuvik-Tuk highway, we are going to, hopefully, be working toward a funding arrangement with the federal government here in the very near future.
Secondly, on the Mackenzie Valley Highway, we thanked all the federal Ministers that we met with for their involvement with the help we’ve gotten from CanNor to continue the work on the Mackenzie Valley Highway. I mentioned earlier we had just recently got another $600,000 through CanNor to allow us to work with communities up and down the Mackenzie Valley to continue that momentum on the Mackenzie Valley all-weather road.
On the port of Hay River and the dredging program there, it was suggested to me by the parliamentary secretary that we engage in a letter writing campaign to himself and to the Minister of Transportation, Mr. Denis Lebel. We certainly will take him up on that offer and get those letters out as soon as possible.
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Bouchard.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The question on the Hay River dredging, I’m just wondering if the Minister has any dollars to commit to doing, other than letter writing. Any dollars for assessing the value and the cost of dredging the Hay River?
The federal government didn’t commit any dollars during these meetings, but we did mention to them that at one point in time they had a $50 million program for dredging and how detrimental the lack of having a program is to a community like Hay River. That was quite clearly articulated to Minister Fletcher. We will try our best to get some funding from the federal government to look at a dredging program in the port of Hay River.
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. The honourable Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate the opportunity to ask some questions. I’m going to follow up on some questions mentioned by Member Bisaro. She asked about the downtown day shelter. What I found very odd was the fact that the Minister of Health and Social Services is now saying they’re going to continue the existing vendor to run that facility. With all the concerns and issues that have been raised and the coverage on that particular facility on the quality of the way it has been run, why is he just sort of rolling it over and going to another year contract with the same vendor?
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The Minister of Health and Social Services, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There are not a whole lot of people lining up to run a day shelter, but right now what we’re doing is finding a department or an organization that’s prepared to do that work. We don’t have a final proposal or agreement with them either, but the assumption is that that’s what we’ll do there. There is a possibility, even though we are having some difficulty, that YK Health and Social Services Authority, once they go through an RFP process, and we are questioning whether or not we can get the RFP process completed by the end of this fiscal year. Because we don’t think that we can do a proper process, we thought that we’d extend it a year before we went through that process.
Mr. Speaker, what I’m hearing from the Minister is the department can’t put their paperwork together in order to ask for a proper proposal. We have the Tree of Peace less than two blocks away. We have the Salvation Army just a few blocks north to that particular thing. The Salvation Army has even expressed interest in this particular project if they’d like to take it on. We would rather be satisfied with a substandard or an extensively inadequate product rather than sort of reaching out to what’s good.
Why is it better to continue on with the same people who can’t even force reasonable policies such as no drinking on premises? Why don’t we just shut it down and start fresh properly? Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, I think that running a day shelter is a difficult task. Like I indicated, we’re not sure if it’s better to continue with our current vendor. We don’t even know if the current vendor will continue beyond March 31st. All we know is that right now we haven’t received a contribution agreement between ourselves and the YK Health and Social Services Authority so the money can flow to an operator or an organization that can run that facility.
What we do know is that we’ll continue the funding so that we don’t have to close it down. It seemed to have some value. Some Members think that there is value in keeping the day shelter open, so we’ll keep the money flowing. It was intended for a three-year pilot project and we’ve decided not to shut it down after the first three years. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, the day shelter services are so important here in the city and they do help a lot of people. But the reality is, if it’s going to keep being run into the ground by the same bunch of people, we might as well just stop, refresh our mandate and policy, and ask ourselves why do we do this and how do we do it right.
Why doesn’t the Minister just say, let’s take this money that we’re committing into going forward, shut it down and put out a real proposal so we get the services we need that help people who need services such as the day shelter provides, rather than allowing it in its existing form which does more harm than good? Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, there are a lot of people using that shelter now. So I’ll have the department look at that. Maybe if the most prudent thing to do is shut the shelter down until we get a proper proposal and operator, or an organization that we think can improve the services to the shelter, then we’ll wait until it gets a little warmer and then we’ll shut it down. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I think the Minister sort of answered my last question in that form.
What would it take to just sort of pause at the end of this fiscal contract to re-write and re-evaluate what we need and what we want as objectives, and to start fresh, maybe in May or June, and do it right, rather than continuing to limp on in a bad form as we are presently existing now?
The whole town knows it, the whole neighbourhood knows it, and certainly the people that are there know that. So what will it take for you to do that? Thank you.
Not much, actually. We could actually let the funding expire on March 31st, shut it down and then start from scratch, look at that building or another building, whatever, and then see if we can provide a better service. We’re prepared to do that.
We are looking, more or less, at the individuals who were using the shelter, the tremendous high use of the shelter, and the weather. Even though we were not receiving some information that we needed to continue, we decided to continue to flow the funding until the fall. But if the Members in the Legislative Assembly think the best thing to do is shut it down and start over, we’re prepared to do that. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The preamble today was a little bit long on everybody’s questions, so I’m going to allow Mr. Nadli to finish off his oral questions for the day. Mr. Nadli.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I promise to keep it short.
My question today is to the Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs. Right now at the local level we have a lot of volunteers that participate quite graciously in the fire department. I just wanted to ask the Minister, can he comment further on the assessment of community fire services. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Nadli. The Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs, Mr. McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Through the office of the assistant fire marshal in each region, we’re working with community fire departments to identify training and anything else they may need. I believe that work has been done and we are just waiting to hear. Once shortcomings are identified, we will work with the communities and try and get them trained up, or work with them in identifying potential pieces of equipment they may need. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, I’d like to thank the Minister for his response. I understand that there’s an Emergency Management Training Strategy in place. It’s in the development stages. Most of the training that local fire departments receive is defensive for dwelling structures or home structures.
What are some of the results that have been achieved through the department’s Emergency Management Training Strategy? Thank you.
