Shauna Morgan

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Does the Minister know whether the executive director of legal aid has any experience in family or children's law to be able to take on those responsibilities?

Thank you. And if the Minister doesn't know off of the top of her head, I'd appreciate getting that in writing too, just the number of positions within HSS that have been reduced in terms of the child and youth counsellor program.

Next, I wanted to ask about the line item community clinics in health centres, which I understand are the ones providing primary care services which, as we know, is to be the focus of this Assembly. You know, according to our business plans, our mandate document, we're focusing on primary care. So I was puzzled to see the main estimates of $82.5 million is less than...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So to be clear, we're cutting the senior lawyer who runs the Office of the Children's Lawyer? Is that what you're referring to when you say it's simply an administrative position?

Sure.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So while there's limited access to Yellowknife students for speech and language consultations, there's almost no care being provided by the government to students in other regions. And many of the regions outside the North Slave have reached out to private companies to receive services and reached out for funding through Jordan's Principle. How does the department justify having entire regions have to reach out to private companies in order to receive any services at all? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So just to clarify, the idea will any HSS you know, mental health workers, counsellors, social workers, outreach nurses, etcetera, etcetera be, like, going into these facilities and, like, actually supporting them on the ground or all that work is to be managed and overseen by Indigenous governments or partners and HSS is just in the background sort of providing administrative support or something? Can the Minister clarify.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So the problem is that only a few years ago, we did actually have staff in these positions and now they've left. So it's not simply a matter of we were never able to staff these positions, it's an issue of retaining the staff that we had only a few short years ago. So what is the department planning to do to address this poor retention to ensure that we can offer the full range of critical services in this area? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. First, just to clarify here, in the announcement or the opening remarks for from the Minister, one of the big the higher profile items was the new initiative for the Transitional Housing Addictions Recovering Program. And can the Minister explain where that funding is located in our budget here? I'm assuming it's probably somewhere on this page 203 under the health and social programs operations expenditure. But can you clarify where we would see that funding and what exactly HSS's role will be in that initiative?

That's me. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So my questions are for the Minister of Health and Social Services. As a bit of background, when children are learning struggling to learn to speak or communicate or read, speech language pathologists can provide critical assistance and tools for these kids. And HSS is responsible for providing speech language pathology services that include hospitalbased services, travel clinics, preschool therapy, schoolaged therapy, and elder care. While only a few years ago, we used to have fully staffed SLP teams in Inuvik, Fort Smith, Hay River, and Yellowknife. Now...

Okay, thank you, Mr. Chair. And what about court services, will that budget need to increase too?