Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In my Member’s statement today I talked about the opportunity here for hope, purpose at the downtown day shelter. My questions, of course, are directed to the Minister of Health and Social Services. My question specifically is this: What services, such as addictions treatment or employability type of programs, would he be willing to do as some outreach to help capture some of the potential and give people a bit of hope and opportunity for the future there? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The Minister responsible for Health and Social Services, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I can’t come up with all of the services that would be offered in the shelter, off the top of my head, but I can say that the day shelter is a project that has a committee overseeing any of the projects and so on. The committee has members from the YK Health and Social Services, BHP Billiton, City of Yellowknife and our department. We can work on putting something together and provide to the Member that we can lay out what services could be offered to the individuals that frequent that shelter. Thank you.
A number of weeks ago I was there on a Sunday dropping off some food and people were openly drinking. Does the GNWT support that type of behaviour, and if they do, if you could put that officially clearly on the record? And if they don’t, my question is: What do they plan to do about that particular problem? Thank you.
The department does not support public drinking. This is not supposed to be a drinking establishment. It was some place to provide a day shelter for individuals that had nowhere else to go during the day. If this is officially a complaint that people are drinking in the day shelter, I will contact the department, the department will make contact with the RCMP and the RCMP can check it out. Thank you.
Will the Minister of Health and Social Services be willing to provide some access services for people to get into the addictions stream for treatment? In other words, would he be able to put some type of counselling process down there to be able to offer people addiction treatment opportunities? Thank you.
I know that the community counselling services are available to everyone in the communities, so also available to everyone in Yellowknife. These members that are going there, we could maybe provide some information to them, advising them that counselling for addictions is available near where the day shelter is, and that perhaps that would be a method of informing them, and also getting them to go take counselling within the city. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Your final, short supplementary, Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m having trouble following his last answer. Is the Minister saying services are available and he can establish them in this particular facility and in a manner that could encourage people to take this path? Thank you.
I don’t think the counsellors are going into the day shelter to counsel the people that are there, but there are services available in the community. What I’m saying is that we can advise the people that are there, that are staying there during the day, the individuals or the organization that’s running the shelter, we can provide them information on what counselling services are available, and they can provide that information to the people that are resident there during the day.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The Member for Inuvik Boot Lake, Mr. Moses.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are also for the Minister of Health and Social Services. It’s in regard to his Minister’s statement that he gave a little bit earlier. I commend him on taking the initiative to create an action plan. As well, it’s something that we can start on and start building on, as we make it more interesting as we move forward.
In regard to my colleague’s questions here, I just wanted to ask the Minister, in terms of policy for getting into treatment, what’s the current policy for anybody that wants to seek treatment in the Northwest Territories. Is it still a 30-day sobriety, and if you’re 30 days sober then you can go to treatment? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Moses. The honourable Minister of Health and Social Services, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I don’t know the exact time. From what I understand, the individual must remain sober for some time and also attend counselling prior to going into treatment. However, there has been a bit of a call from communities that this thing should be shortened and should be reduced, that when an individual’s time has come where they recognize that they have to go to treatment right now, that should be available. We are actually looking at that to see what type of success rate we would have if we were to do that instantly. That it is the minute the individual wants to go to treatment that we try to find a spot for them right away. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, I think the Minister answered that very well. It goes to show where our deficiencies are within the government system. We don’t have any services to help our people who are struggling with mental health and addictions, especially the addictions. There is no support out there, no services. There are no detox centres that we can house our individuals that need help.
In his Minister’s statement, the Minister mentioned that he will ensure that existing services like the Nats’ejee K’eh Treatment Centre and detoxification services are effective. I am not too sure which detoxification services he has mentioned. If he can tell me what those are and if he plans to have any of these detoxification centres in communities that have alcohol and liquor establishments or even liquor stores. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, the department sees that as probably the number one gap as we talked to other Members about service gaps. That is detoxification. Detoxification is a program. It is not a treatment. We don’t have an actual facility for individuals to go to detoxify. However, it is a program that we would work on.
We see that as a service gap. We’re not sure that we’re going to build infrastructure around trying to work on detox, but rather develop some programs that will be used to help people to detoxify before going for treatment. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, I guess I am going to have to say I disagree with that statement. Programs are good, but when people are in the system right now and they are battling addictions, they are going to need a detoxification centre to clean up their body and clean their system out, so then they can have a clear mental picture of actually going to those programs where they will get help. I think it is putting the cart before the horse, as some Members have said before. We need to detox.
In regard to the Minister’s statement, there are four goals that he mentioned. One area that he doesn’t talk about is prevention as a goal that was set out in his action plan. Can I get the Minister to give me a reason why the prevention is not one of the four goals mentioned in this action plan? Prevent it before we have to treat it. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, the nature of all of the action plan is prevention. If we are able to incorporate a good action plan around mental health and addictions, that is overall prevention. The whole action plan is about prevention, about trying to defer or avoid future costs for treatment or future costs for having people in the hospitals and so on. The whole idea of this program is to reduce those costs in the future to do the upstream work so that we have positive impacts downstream. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Moses.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, prevention is huge and I think we need to think outside the box here in terms of either creating a harder tax on liquor sales or creating some type of legislation that would make it harder for people to continue to abuse alcohol and drugs that we have in the Northwest Territories. Is the Minister willing to look at existing or create new legislation that will prevent people from becoming more addicted to alcohol and drugs? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, that’s a difficult question. Creating legislation to move some money from liquor sales, tax on liquor sales to help with addictions and mental health and so on is one thing. If that’s what he’s referring to, then that legislation is something that would be developed by the Department of Finance.
I’m not sure what type of legislation we would have to develop in order to prevent people from consuming alcohol. Drugs are illegal. Alcohol is legal. We need to develop legislation around alcohol, but what type of legislation would prevent people from consuming alcohol when it’s available? If you have the money, you can buy it. We are faced with that. I don’t know how to really answer the question. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The honourable Member for Mackenzie Delta, Mr. Blake.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I would like to ask the Minister of Health and Social Services what is your long-term plan for the elders in the Mackenzie Delta for long term-care. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Blake. The honourable Minister of Health and Social Services, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We heard a lot about this when we travelled in the Mackenzie Delta. The fact that there is no long-term care facility, as we refer to long-term care facility where there is nursing care and all of that, in the Mackenzie Delta in the three communities that this Member represents. However, they did talk about reopening and re-profiling the Joe Greenland Centre from the type of care that was being provided and shut down to where the Housing Corporation will be renovating that facility and then allocating those for elders within the community of Aklavik and perhaps communities from the other two communities in the Mackenzie Delta. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, I strongly believe that the care of the elders is with the Department of Health and Social Services. I believe that we are delegating that responsibility over to Housing. Does the department plan to take that portfolio back and look after elders in the Mackenzie Delta? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, the Department of Health and Social Services is trying to use the integrated service delivery model to try to address issues with seniors’ care right across the territory. We do recognize that the numbers indicate that we should be providing more home care services to allow seniors to live independently.
As far as the responsibility for individuals that can no longer safely care for themselves, the option is going to a long-term care facility in Inuvik. We can’t afford to build that type of long-term care facility in all of the communities, but there is one in Inuvik, although these units fill up almost immediately as they are built. That is our answer and to try to prevent people from going there is also our responsibility, and we can do that by providing home support workers, home care workers and so on for the citizens in the Mackenzie Delta. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, as the facility in Inuvik does not have adequate space, what is your backup plan? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We are slowly expanding long-term care in the territory. Right now we are increasing long-term care in the Tlicho region by nine beds, or I think 10 beds, going from an eight-bed facility to an 18-bed facility. We’re expanding regionally again in the Sahtu by providing an 18-bed long-term care facility. Unfortunately, in the plans we don’t have an additional long-term care facility going into the Mackenzie Delta. We have one in Inuvik, as I indicated, but we don’t have a plan to build a long-term care facility in the Mackenzie Delta. So we’ll have to work with Health and Social Services to see what type of services we can have to try to keep people in their homes as long as possible. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Blake.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Just recently we added two facilities for elders in the Northwest Territories. I’d like to ask the Minister, can the Mackenzie Delta be next in line for an elders facility. Thank you.
The capital planning process is going to determine where the next capital projects will occur. It will be very difficult for me to indicate that that would be the next capital planning project that we would build. As far as long-term care and as far as health facilities go, we can seriously look at a long-term care facility over there, but how it competes against other capital projects is determined by the capital planning or infrastructure committees set up within the infrastructure we have here as a government. Thank you.
Mahsi cho, Mr. Speaker. I wish to table the following document, entitled “A Shared Path Towards Wellness: Mental Health and Addictions Action Plan, June 2012.” Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Mr. Ramsay.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I wish to table the following document, entitled “Communities and Diamonds: 2010 Annual Report of the Government of the Northwest Territories under the BHP Billiton, Diavik and DeBeers Socio-economic Agreements.” Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Pursuant to Section 21 of the Legislative Assembly Retiring Allowances Act, I wish to table the Legislative Assembly’s Retiring Allowances Fund Financial Statements for the Year Ended March 31, 2012.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I give notice that on Thursday, June 14, 2012, I will move the following motion: I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Thebacha, that notwithstanding Rule 4, when this House adjourns on June 14, 2012, it shall be adjourned until Wednesday, October 17, 2012;
And further, that any time prior to October 17, 2012, if the Speaker is satisfied, after consultation with the Executive Council and Members of the Legislative Assembly, that the public interest requires that the House should meet at an earlier time during the adjournment, the Speaker may give notice and thereupon the House shall meet at the time stated in such notice and shall transact its business as it has been duly adjourned until that time. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Moses. Item 16, notices of motion for first reading of bills. Mr. Miltenberger.
Mr. Speaker, I give notice that on Thursday, June 14, 2012, I will move that Bill 9, Supplementary Appropriation Act (Operations Expenditures), No. 1, 2012-2013, be read for the first time. Thank you.
