Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Our days in this House are drawing to a close. I want to speak about something today that’s still very, very important in the Northwest Territories and that is the subject of addictions. I don’t think anybody who works for this government around this table could say that we have anything less than an epidemic proportion of problems with addictions, and we also know that it affects every aspect of life in the Northwest Territories, whether it’s justice, education, health, or just the well-being and safety of our communities.
So, as a government, we look for ways to address addictions, and I do commend the government for things like community counselling programs; the NWT Helpline; the Matrix program, which I just saw an ad in the Fort Smith newspaper for a Matrix program which outlined it all – it looks amazing – withdrawal management; on-the-land healing programs; and then also there are the residential treatment centres. We do not have a residential treatment centre in the Northwest Territories at this time, but we were told that with the money that was saved from the closure of Nats’ejee K’eh that clients who needed residential treatment could be referred to southern institutions and that this process would be streamlined, so we took that as something to be encouraged by, but still today we know that it is not easy for people to find treatment that want treatment.
In my constituency I was approached by a constituent, and I’ll make this story short, but this individual was going to the family counselling services and he hit rock bottom. He was faced imminently with the loss of his job – which was a very good job – with the loss of his family, with the loss of his home, and this person took matters into his own hands. They got out their credit card and they got themselves to treatment because they knew they were at that crossroads of absolute loss of everything they valued. So they got themselves to residential treatment in the South, on their credit card, and I want to say, happily, the treatment was fantastic, it helped so much. They returned to their community, to their job, to their family, to their life, and to this day remain sober, and this was many, many months ago that they did this. But the fact is that they had to do that on their own dime and that debt still remains now a cloud hanging over that family.
This is a compassionate government. I have gone to these Ministers before with one-offs and unusual circumstances and they have been compassionate.
Mr. Speaker, I’d like to seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement.
---Unanimous consent granted
So, although we can say that we have a streamlined process, there are these one-offs and these unusual circumstances which do occur at times. For this particular case, I am asking this government, again appealing to these Ministers for discretionary latitude to help this family out now with this debt that remains for an initiative that they took to get the treatment that they needed and are now living a happy and healthy life. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen, Member for Nahendeh, Mr. Menicoche.
