Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. No, there is no increase in that budget.
I’m sorry to hear that answer from the Minister. I’m not sure whether or not the department is aware, but I would hope the department is aware, that there is a significant cohort of individuals who will soon need to be housed on their own in independent living, and we do not have the infrastructure in this city, in this community to handle it. We don’t provide many other supports for individuals who need that kind of assistance. I’d like to ask the Minister, if there’s nothing in this budget, what kind of a plan does the department have to assist individuals to go from a home situation to an independent living situation. Not an institution; I don’t want us to build more institutions, but we do need to acquire houses, and we do need to acquire staff, to provide supervision in those houses for these individuals who want to live on their own but need some assistance. What plan does the department have to expand our current provision of programs and services for these individuals?
We do not have a plan to expand that budget item beyond what is there. In fact, it’s slightly lower this year than last year.
That is again unfortunate news. Not what I wanted to hear. I would urge the department to do some inquiry, particularly within the city of Yellowknife, and determine the number of people who will soon be requiring and needing independent assisted living. It’s an area where the services are generally provided by non-government organizations, but the funding generally comes from GNWT, and I think we’re going to find within the next five years that there’s going to be a huge need for housing these particular individuals and I would ask the Minister if he would commit to look into the situation, get some numbers and report back to the Standing Committee on Social Programs or at least to me as a Member for Yellowknife.
The department is prepared to go to the authorities. The community health programs in this area of residential care of elderly persons with disabilities is something that’s driven through the authorities and working with the non-government organizations. We can go to the authorities and indicate to them or ask them if they do see forced growth in this area and ask them to come forward with forced-growth submissions to address the issue that the Member speaks of.
I appreciate that commitment from the Minister, but the funding ultimately comes from the GNWT. The authorities don’t have the ability to raise funds. To the Minister: If you get forced growth submissions, will you entertain them seriously and what sort of justification do you need in order to fund the authorities to the fullest? It’s fine to say you’re going to ask the authorities, but when they put in the request, are you going to recognize the need and are you going to fund that need?
After our discussions with the authorities on these forced growth areas, submissions from the authorities, we will take them forward to the Financial Management Board and we will put them as part of the budget process.
That’s fine.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Moving on with questions I have Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I wanted to follow up on my general comments about the mental health programs. Specifically, I know the Minister is aware that this House is on record as wanting to see action in the way of diversion in particular, especially diversion from our court systems and corrections systems, which are ineffective without mental health issues being addressed and certainly very expensive and drawing resources away. On top of that, the crime bill, Bill C-10, is exacerbating those costs greatly and detracting from other important programs. My more specific questions for the Minister are, I’d like to start with: What has the department done to date? What is planned for in this budget? What resources have been identified to do that work?
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. With that we’ll go to Ms. DeLancey.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. The department is participating with other social envelope departments right now, in developing a joint work plan to look at mental wellness courts or specialized courts in the Northwest Territories. We’re doing this under the authority of the Social Envelope Deputy Ministers Committee, looking at having a work plan by the end of this summer.
When the mental health and addictions action plan is tabled, we certainly have tried to reflect in there some of the interdepartmental work that needs to go on to address diversion, and how we make sure that there are services available so that if specialized courts are in place and people can be diverted from the corrections system, there are services that can support them. There are no new resources in this budget to reflect this work at this time. As we go forward with the planning and work plan, we would identify additional resources through the business planning process for the next fiscal year.
I don’t want to talk about the Social Envelope Committee. I think we’re well aware of that and so on. I’m asking specifically about the Department of Health and Social Services’ work in this area. What work have they done specifically? What are their responsibilities? I think the House is well aware that this has been identified by the House as a priority, so we want to know that things are happening, that the resources are identified. What is Health doing to fulfill their part of this envelope committee specifically? Thank you.
Our role in this initiative, as I said, is to ensure that there are proper supports and programs and services in place. In our work to develop the Mental Health and Addictions Action Plan, we certainly are aware that there are a number of gaps and services, and so our role will be to implement the commitment in that action plan to try to fill those gaps and make sure that the services are there to support individuals who we are trying to keep out of the correctional system.
So the unspoken here is that it’s all a gap. We do not have any programs and services in place currently in mental health to assist with the diversion program. Is that what I’m hearing?
At this time, we don’t have any programs that are specifically designed just to do that. Certainly, counselling programs and other programs are available to people in the correctional system, as they are to any other resident. There is no specialized program at this time just for people that are dealing with the justice system.
What special services are needed?
We believe that that’s correct and that is why we’re working with our colleagues in the Department of Justice and other departments to get a better sense of what those areas are and make sure that that need can be addressed.
I’m just having a hard time accepting that this late in the game we don’t know what specialized services are required. This is our own system. I can spend 15 minutes on the Internet, or so could our research people, and find out what all the other jurisdictions are doing, what they’ve had put in place. We’re talking accountability here. What specialized services are we missing that are required for diversion from court systems into mental health? From what I’ve seen, these are just mental health programs. I want to hear now the specifics, so that we can have some accountability in knowing that these are being addressed. What are these specialized services that the deputy minister is talking about to fill the gaps?
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister Beaulieu.
The department is spending $20.168 million on social service delivery, which includes social workers, mental health and addiction workers, mental health and addiction program funding. We have $2.931 million with non-government organizations for residential care for alcohol and drug programs related to addictions, mental health, disabilities and chronic illnesses. We have $2.7 million family violence funding, which includes emergency shelters and counselling services; $1.8 million for community wellness programs including the Bailey House in Yellowknife. Specific to more of the mental health and addictions, that’s what we have in our community health programs and others that are in other pots, throughout the department.
Thanks for the Minister’s comments there. That’s exactly my point. The mental health diversion courts are put in place with no additional costs in other jurisdictions. Sometimes there are additional costs. Usually they’re quite modest. We have, I’m assuming, a lot of programs, and the Minister has indicated some. This is not the mountain that the department is making it out to be. We passed a motion in this House directing, requesting, recommending. It’s been identified repeatedly in committee work. This Minister has said he’s all about prevention. The question remains, what are we doing? What are we doing for this relatively straightforward request? We can analyze until the cows come home, but tell me what the analysis is? Where are the gaps? What is your responsibility? What will you do and where are the resources to do it towards this end? Thank you.
We are trying to plan. We don’t think that this is something… We recognize there are some technical aspects, legislative aspects to what the Member is asking. What we need to do is we need to plan for it. We want to make sure that we are doing this right. Our responsibility is fairly clear, that if we have individuals that are prepared to divert from… If the court is going to divert an individual to some counselling, to take him out on the land, to deal with him in a different manner, keep him with the family, do the various things that are needed, then we do have the programs in place.
As the Member says, it’s not going to be a real high cost. In fact, we view it in the social envelope Ministers as, actually, a cost-saving measure. We recognize that if we’re able to keep individuals from just going into a corrections system, that we’re saving thousands of dollars a month for every year that we’re able to keep one individual out of the corrections system and into counselling, working with the community, doing things that we think would be positive for the individual to possibly remain in the community and do other things that they would be required to do as directed by the court. We don’t think it’s going to cost money but we think it’s something that we have to plan. We would like the opportunity to discuss this, plan it and do it properly, and we think that by providing what we have in place already, we intend to eventually put this in place. When we do put it in place, we want it to work and we don’t want to be picking people up and then putting them in jail for a longer period of time because they didn’t listen to the court order. We want to have a system that individuals can flow into and have success here and save real dollars by keeping people out of corrections.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. If I could interject for a second, the Member, I’m sure, didn’t quite get the response he’s looking for. Would the Minister, through the Social Envelope Committee, make commitments to the Social Programs committee on this subject moving forward?
Yes, I will.
Would this be in agreement to the Member?
Yes, thank you.
Thank you very much. We’re on page 8-29, Health and Social Services, activity summary, community health programs, operations expenditure summary, $87.998 million. Committee agree?
Agreed.
Thank you. Page 8-30, Health and Social Services, activity summary, community health programs, grants and contributions, total grants and contributions, $69.941 million.
Agreed.
Ms. Bisaro.
Thanks, Mr. Chair. I have a couple of questions with regard to the numbers on this page. Under community services, the family violence funding has increased about $400,000. Could I get an explanation of where that funding will be used? Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Minister Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’m going to have the deputy minister provide a response to that.
Thank you, Minister Beaulieu. Ms. DeLancey.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. That funding is increased funding to stabilize existing shelters and it will be used in the Beaufort-Delta, Fort Smith and Hay River.
Thank you, Ms. DeLancey. Ms. Bisaro.
Thanks for that explanation. That’s what I thought, so that’s confirmed.
The next item down is community wellness programs. It mentions Bailey House in Yellowknife. I have heard, I believe, that we are developing a community wellness strategy and we are putting wellness committees, I think it is, in communities in the NWT. I’d like to know from the Minister, can I get a bit of an explanation in what we are doing in each community. Is it a wellness strategy in each community? Are we putting a wellness coordinator in there? What is that program that we’re doing regarding wellness? Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Minister Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We have a coordinator, one coordinator, and she’s going to be working with each of the communities to put a community wellness plan together. The wellness plan is going to look to the state of the communities at this time and then develop a plan to increase the wellness community by community.
I presume this is going to take awhile; we have 33 communities. One coordinator is not going to set up a plan within this fiscal year, I presume. So what communities are targeted for the 2012-13 year?
We plan on expanding some of the work in wellness. One of the things we are hoping to do is work with community organizations or Aboriginal governments within the communities to help us develop these plans, so it would not be just one individual that is developing all of the plans, but we’ll try to work with the Aboriginal groups, Tlicho Government, as an example, the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation, the Yellowknives Dene First Nation and so on. We’re going to be engaging the groups when we develop the wellness plans across the territory.
I didn’t hear where we’re targeting in this fiscal year, but I’d like to know if the Minister can advise me when the City of Yellowknife will be contacted to develop a wellness plan or a wellness strategy for my community. Thank you.
We are starting with the organizations that I just spoke of, the Tlicho, the Inuvialuit and YK Dene. We’ve also met with the NWT Association of Communities at the last meeting in Norman Wells and advised all the communities that we were doing this. What we’re hoping is the communities will work with our coordinator, well known to all in the Association of Communities as she worked for the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs for many years and had a major role within that association. I’m hoping that we get some uptake from the communities, but for now we’re starting with those three organizations.
I’d like to know from the Minister if it is the intention to have a wellness plan in each of our 33 communities, will there be the development plan for Yellowknife. Thank you.
We are hoping to proceed with every community that wishes to have a wellness plan. We will work with every community that wishes to have a wellness plan.
Having said that, we have to realize that developing a wellness plan in a city the size of Yellowknife would be a difficult task. It may be portions of the city. We need to do a lot of work, a lot of planning in order to come up with a wellness plan for the city of Yellowknife. Of course, in the smaller communities it would be a lot easier. Most organizations in small communities encompass the entire community, whereas in Yellowknife various organizations would only take portions of the community and deal with only portions. So it could be a task, a major task in communities even like Hay River, Inuvik and Fort Smith as well. We recognize that, but we made the offer that we are prepared to try to develop wellness plans in all 33 communities.
Thanks to the Minister for the information. I guess I would suggest that, yes, Yellowknife is a larger community, but city council already has a Social Issues Committee. Yellowknife City Council already has a social plan that they rolled out a couple of years ago and I think the Minister only needs to look at the example of the Yellowknife Homelessness Coalition which has gathered together all organizations and all people who are interested in dealing with homelessness in our city. So I would urge the city not to look at this as a difficult task, but to look at it as a slightly larger task than for a community of 100 people, but Yellowknife needs to have a wellness strategy as much as any other community. Fifty percent of the population live in this community, so when you get the request from Yellowknife, as I’m sure you will, please don’t look at it as putting it to the bottom of the pile because it’s going to be a tough thing to do. Thank you.
I commit not to put Yellowknife at the bottom of the pile. I would have the department take the wellness plans in the order that interest is shown.
