Thank you, Mr. Speaker. A couple of weeks ago, I spoke about the alarming statistics in our daily intake of sugar and some of the national guidelines that will be forthcoming from our National Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada. Last week I wanted to take this journey a bit further and I posed some specifics around obesity in our territory. This week I’d like to ask some questions to the Minister of Health and Social Services on the subject.
As I said, a couple of weeks ago I asked a question to the Minister of what he was doing specifically in dealing with our daily consumption of sugar in the Northwest Territories. His response, and I quote from Hansard: “I’m not sure. I can’t really speak to the specifics of whether we have programs aimed just purely at sugar, but I will get the information for the Member.”
Can the Minister give the House any update on what he discovered? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. The honourable Minister of Health, Mr. Abernethy.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have directed the department to pull that information together. It hasn’t been pulled together at this point, but we will get it to the Member at our earliest convenience. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Can the Minister inform the House of any specific programs that are integrated with our daycares, our soon-to-be junior kindergartens and our schools that deal with sugar and calorie education? If not, why?
In cooperation with Education, Culture and Employment and MACA, we are obviously encouraging healthy living, healthy eating, healthy activity within our schools and within our youth populations. We do have the Drop the Pop campaign, which is specifically aimed at pop, but by default, we are trying to address some sugar issues there as well.
In this budget, we also have a significant amount of money – $1 million – put into healthy eating for school programs as part of our Early Childhood Development and Anti-Poverty strategies. So there are a number of things we’re trying to do. I personally believe we need to do more and we will be working with the department to put in more strategies to encourage healthy eating, including a greater awareness on sugar and the differences between more raw based sugars that are in food which has a higher glycemic index.
It sounds like the Minister is becoming more aware of sugar and I applaud his knowledge on it.
Can the Minister inform the House if his department collects statistics on obesity in the Northwest Territories and, more specifically, the economic and regional variances? If so, is this information publicly available? Thank you.
We don’t have that type of data, but we will be looking at improving our record keeping and be able to have more solid record keeping and be able to provide more timely statistics to all Members of the House, including Cabinet, once we have passed the Health Information Act and it moves forward via…(inaudible)…we will have the ability to track data on a more real time basis. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Dolynny.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I think we are making headway here today. Can the Minister inform the House what his policy on dealing with obesity is in the Northwest Territories? Does he have a strategy he can share with us? Thank you.
As I’ve already indicated, we are trying to deal with it on a more holistic level. We are working on promoting healthy living, healthy activity and healthy eating. We are doing that in cooperation with Education, Culture and Employment and MACA. Obviously, we would like to do a little bit more. I think it’s important to educate the people on the differences of natural sugar occurring in food and white sugar, which is more of the problem than the sugar naturally occurring in food.
We need to do a better job. We are going to put something together so that we can help people understand the difference and help them have informed decisions. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. The Member for Hay River North, Mr. Bouchard.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Last week I wrote the Minister of Transportation some questions about the Mackenzie Valley Highway and the potential of closing the road only to winter travel, and my questions today are for him in asking, with the temperatures still not dropping in the Sahtu region, why the roads are being closed to winter road traffic only?
Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. The Minister of Transportation, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. For communication purposes, we’ve communicated, when we saw that the weather was warming up a bit, a possibility of reducing heavy traffic to night traffic, but at this time there are no restrictions. Thank you.
Thank you. My next question about these roads is the maintenance and indications are that the maintenance and operations of the maintenance are being shut down at this current time, I’m assuming because of funding. Is this true?
Thank you. The maintenance that needs to be done on the winter road is being done. There will sometimes be just putting heavy equipment on the winter roads, such as heavy maintenance equipment, will do more harm than good in shortening the length that the road may be open. So, essentially what is happening is in any areas where they are dark and attractive to the sun, we try to cover it with snow. But the maintenance that needs to be done to extend the road as long as possible will be done. Thank you.
Thank you. I know with this road specifically we’ve gotten some assistance from industry. I’m just wondering: is there a set budget for this type of maintenance, or do we basically continue the maintenance until we can keep the road open as long as possible and are we allowed to have cost overruns similar to firefighting season? We don’t know what the length of a winter season is going to be and it may be more costly. So is there a set budget and are we allowed to exceed the maintenance budgets?
Thank you. Generally the winter roads operate in a certain time period. We track the average times in which the roads remain open. As far as the operations costs of the road, these are all done by contract. So we sign the contract with a company to do a certain part of the winter road and we stay with that contract, and that contract is intended to provide services from the time the road opens until the road closes. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Bouchard.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Obviously, I do believe we are seeing a colder than average season and I’m just wondering, if the season is longer, will the Department of Transportation extend these road contracts, these road maintenance contracts and take on the additional costs?
Thank you. All NWT winter roads are public roads and the Department of Transportation tries to keep the roads open as long as possible. Budgets are a consideration, but if the road can be extended to remain open for an extra week or something at the end of March, then the department will do everything they can to extend that road. But, of course, money is a consideration. This is not a bottomless pit. We have to, at some point, follow the contract. There are provisions in the contract that allow the road to be open as long as possible. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The Member for Inuvik Boot Lake, Mr. Moses.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have some questions in follow-up to my Member’s statement today. As I mentioned, the government is doing a lot of good work in terms of supporting foster families and getting the programs in place to make sure that children in the NWT are given the proper services that they are entitled to. I just want to follow up with the Minister of Health and Social Services in terms of trying to educate residents of the Northwest Territories how this government can support them should they want to become a foster family in the community, or else if they want to take the options of taking care of one of their own.
So I’d like to ask the Minister of Health and Social Services, what kind of support is in place for any immediate families that could take care of another sibling’s child or an aunt or uncle’s child where they can provide the services and an immediate family member will obviously want to keep the children within the family? So what services are provided for immediate family members should they take the responsibility of caring for a child? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Minister. The Minister of Health and Social Services, Mr. Abernethy.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This is actually a fairly complex question because there are so many different scenarios where we could apply. It really depends on the nature or the reason the child has entered into the child and family services system.
If a family member asks another family member to take care of their child, there are no supports, but if the child enters the child and family services system by way of the legislation that we have available to us today and the goal is obviously to keep the children in their communities or with families as much as possible, we want families to be whole and we’ll find ways to keep them together. If a person’s child, they want them to stay with a family, that family member would have to go through the foster program and become a foster parent in order to receive the supports. If they don’t then they don’t get the support.
This is a question that came up during a review of the Child and Family Services Act and this is an area that I and many of the Members who participated in that were very, very concerned about. We wanted to find better ways to keep families together. This is something that I think still needs a lot more work within this department and I’m committed to working with the department, with Members to find improvements in this area. Thank you.
Thank you. I appreciate the Minister’s response. Obviously, when a family takes the responsibility to care for another family member’s children there is added stress and there’s added financial pressures that can’t be alleviated when sometimes it’s on the grandparents, who live on a pension. I mean, we can develop those policies, looking at those policies just specifically with people who are on a fixed income, such as grandparents. I mean, let’s start there because the grandparents are usually the ones that take care of their children’s children and there’s no financial benefit there.
Would the Minister be willing to create a policy that would protect our seniors, our elders that take care of their grandchildren and who do it for the sake of keeping the child in the family? So would he be looking at creating a policy specific to start off for our seniors? Thank you.
Thank you. This is where it gets really complicated, as I’ve said. If we’ve got a child entering the system and we want to work with the family to keep the child in the community and if the grandparents are willing to, through the foster screening assessment they are going to get the financial support they need to provide for those kids. But as we heard clearly when we went out to the communities during the Child and Family Services review, not all kids are entering the system, but we still need to find a way to support them.
This is something that was recommended to the department to look into and I, as the Minister of Health and Social Services, still stand behind those recommendations that were made in the previous Assembly and I’m still interested in attempting to find solutions that work for all the residents of the Northwest Territories when it comes to child and family services. Thank you.
Thank you. When we talk about these, I guess I wouldn’t call them deals, but these agreements between the parents and the siblings, sometimes there’s mediation in there and that mediation comes from the social services worker themselves to say our objective is to keep the child in the family and that mediation, when it happens and the grandparent or the family member accepts it, then they’re also accepting that there are no financial incentives to go along with that. Speaking of which, can I ask the Minister, what incentives are there out there to get our families in the Northwest Territories to become foster parent families?
In the Member’s statement he talked about the Foster Family Coalition in the Northwest Territories, and I’d like to take this opportunity to applaud the coalition for providing a unified voice dedicated to improving the quality of life for children in the Northwest Territories. I think they do an incredibly important job. We work with the coalition to help encourage people to become foster parents, and the coalition is getting out across the Northwest Territories with departmental staff providing training and information sessions to encourage people to become foster parents. I think our numbers, in my opinion, are still lower than they should be. I don’t think we’re getting the numbers that we need.
We do provide financial incentive to foster parents to care for children, and it was a recommendation of the 16th Assembly to actually look at the rates that we provide. The department is currently completing a foster care rate review to identify the current cost of living and expenses required to support children, and I expect that to be out in the next month or two, at which time we will be able to discuss increasing those rates or stabilizing those rates so that the foster parents have the dollars they need to adequately care for the children they are bringing into their care.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Moses.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. On the flip side of that, when we have foster families that are caring for the individual or the child, at what age does the child not become the responsibility of foster families and are set to become independent and go out into society? Is there care or treatment or an area where the GNWT still supports these young adults, because right now what we do see is a lot of young adults who continue to stay home with their families because there is no support, especially in some of the small communities where there might be some housing shortages or some jobs that might not be available for some of these young adults. At what age do we take these kids out of the foster families and is there a plan of care for them when they do leave?
This gap in the 16 to 18-year-olds is what I think the Member is alluding to. Right now, when a youth turns 16, they are not required to receive care under the Child and Family Services Act. They can, in a sense, opt out and opt out of foster care. But, at the same time, they can opt in and they can volunteer to stay within the system and continue to receive the supports of the foster parent who will continue to receive support until they’re 18. But this is an optional thing. I believe, and I think the 16th Assembly clearly articulated, that we have an obligation as de facto guardians for those individuals that are 16 to 18 to help them as they’re going away and pursuing education, help them find a path in their lives, so we encourage them strongly to opt in to support through foster care.
I have directed the Department of Health and Social Services to work with Education, Culture and Employment to see if there’s any opportunity to provide some sort of income support to those individuals who opt out, because I do believe we have a responsibility to provide some support to these individuals once they hit that age of 16 where they can technically opt out. I think a lot more work needs to be done in this area. This is an area that I would like to see addressed under the Child and Family Services Act as well.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. The Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have some questions today for the Minister of Justice. I want to follow up on my Member’s statement, and I’d like to talk a little bit about what this government is doing to address the issue of violence against women and family violence. When Minister Miltenberger gave his budget address, as I mentioned in my statement, I heard very little about violence against women and the Coalition Against Family Violence, so I’d like to know from the Minister of Justice if he could please advise what kind of funding is in this budget, this ’14-15 budget, for the Coalition Against Family Violence priorities?
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The Minister of Justice, Mr. Ramsay.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We have moved forward with working with the Healing Drum Society piloting a new program called Wek’eahkaa. We hope to see funding flow for that program in the amount of $292,000 in ’14-15. In addition to that, we also have $105,000 that goes to the YWCA here in Yellowknife.
Thanks to the Minister. I am well aware of those programs, and I don’t believe that they come from the 19 recommendations that came from the last Coalition Against Family Violence Action Plan. There were 19 recommendations in that plan. I’d like to know from the Minister if there is any intent on the part of this government to address any of those 19 recommendations in this upcoming budget?
We have also hired and filled a position at the “G” Division with the RCMP. It’s a family violence coordinator position. That position is up and running. It will help strengthen the RCMP’s front-line response to family violence, providing training and support to members responding to family violence situations. We also have the Domestic Violence Treatment Option court, which is an option for low risk offenders. We also have an eight-week treatment program called Partner, and again, I mentioned the Healing Drum Society and the work with Wek’eahkaa as well. Those are some of the things the government is doing to address the issue of family violence here in the Northwest Territories.
Thanks to the Minister for telling me things that I already know. Thanks very much. My question, I don’t believe, was answered. I’d like to ask the Minister again, what is this government doing to address the 19 recommendations that came from the Coalition Against Family Violence in the last year or two?
I will go back to the department and we’ll get a detailed response for the Member.
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Final supplementary, Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thanks to the Minister. I’d like to ask the Minister, when he does go back to the department, will he please consider the supports that are required in our small communities without an RCMP detachment? I think he’s well aware that without RCMP, things are a little less safe than they are in communities where there is RCMP. Will he look specifically at the safety of women in our small communities without RCMP presence?
Yes, and I think one good news item, if I could, the number of EPOs that have issued have dropped significantly. It was 116 back in 2005-2006 and it stayed around that number. Last year we had 50, so that number of EPOs is trending in a good way.
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. The Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to follow up on the new role that ITI will be assuming as the NWT oil and gas regulator, so my questions are for the Minister of ITI. The Premier and the Minister have said in the House that several options were considered before choosing ITI as our regulator. Could the Minister summarize what those other options were and what were the advantages and disadvantages of each option?
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment, Mr. Ramsay.
