Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The other day we’d heard from Mr. Miltenberger that there was a report coming forward to this particular Cabinet regarding recommendations for addictions. I’d like this government to be known as a government that took action on the addictions problem.
Before the Premier hands out the portfolios, I’d like him to seriously consider giving whoever takes the Department of Health and Social Services a clear and precise mandate that they must finally take up arms and deal with the addictions problems.
I don’t need to lecture this House about how closely homelessness is related to addictions, but I’ll tell you that they are interrelated in a way that affects poverty, that affects employment, that hurts people in the sense that they may lose their jobs, it may lead to crime, it has serious impacts on family. The list is endless.
The attitude of the past government has been that there are one or two places to serve or deal with addictions problems. I will tell you that we have very little results to show from it that we’ve proven anything that we’ve done it right.
Stanton is not a treatment facility for addictions. With all great respect, Nats’ejee K’eh is not a treatment centre for dealing with crack or meth. We must take up arms against this cause. Even if we only move this file inches forward, we must never surrender to these types of demons, because they are stealing the souls of good people and they are destroying the lives of families.
As I understand it, as I said, this issue will be coming to the Cabinet table. If this Cabinet wants to do something on this particular file, they can. They need to have a clear instruction from the Premier and a mandate to do so. They will have my support if they wish to do this, but I wish they not sit on their particular hands as they have in the past.
Finally, the downtown has a day shelter, and it was meant to help people who have homeless problems and to give them somewhere to go during the day. Critical to that function is it gives them some options of what to do next. We need to look at building interrelationships with other NGOs, but how to fight the (a) homeless problem, but (b) also give people options for their particular addictions. This government should not, and I hope will not, lose their partnership that they have with the City of Yellowknife, BHP and, of course, the Department of Health. It would be a sorry state of affairs if we did nothing yet another term on the fight against addictions.
