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.
