Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My question today is for the Minister of Health and Social Services regarding his opening statement earlier today dealing with prevention and promotion. It’s a great subject and a great move forward for this government to be looking into prevention and promotion to get our people in the NWT healthy and living fulfilled lives. In his statement he mentions that communities are essential in making prevention work. He also says that prevention and promotion activities are essential if we want to improve the health status of our population. I believe currently the policy for the Health Promotion Fund, which this would probably filter through, only provides funding to one project per year per organization. In order to make this successful, I believe that this government needs to provide funding to similar projects on a concurrent basis. Is the Minister willing to look into the policy to change the policy so that groups who have successful projects can get funding in subsequent years rather than just having a one-time deal?
Thank you, Mr. Moses. The honourable Minister of Health and Social Services, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, the plan is to move more money into prevention. That is not to say that we want to increase the overall budget in there. Right now the Department of Health and Social Services is spending over $12 million in the area of wellness and also in that budget is where they have the community-based health promotion. What we’re trying to do is move any programs that look like they’re successful, we’re going to support, because we recognize that issue, too, that some of the programs have been funded one year and regardless of whether they’re successful or not, they’ve been dropped.
What we’re trying to do now is move more of that type of money into prevention. We had indicated in the House before that we were hoping to move about what the department is spending, about 1 percent of its budget, on prevention and promotion, to about 3 percent. Thank you.
As the Minister stated, there will be more funding going into health promotion and the policies and looking at the successful projects. But in the past, I believe the department has seen a lot of successful projects. However, funding couldn’t go back to them based on the policy that if an organization had a successful program one year or they got funding for one year, they wouldn’t be able to see funding for the same project the second year. My question was to the Minister, if he’d be willing to change the policy to multi-year funding rather than just the one-time deal for successful projects. Thank you.
The Department of Health and Social Services goes through the annual business planning process, like any other department, but we actually did discuss the ways where we can do this, where we can provide multi-year funding to organizations that are making progress in the area of prevention and promotion. Thank you.
Just one final question in regard to this new funding that might be going to the prevention area. Will there be a marketing strategy going out from the Department of Health and Social Services to all these communities and all these organizations to let them know that the new policy is going to possibly change, so that any organizations that had successful programs in the past and haven’t gone back to that pot because of the current policy, that they will be able to go back and get funding again for a successful project that they had in the past? What is the marketing strategy for this upcoming fiscal year? Thank you.
Initially, when we’re moving into more prevention, more promotion, our first step was to discuss this with the Joint Leadership Council, which are the chairs and the public administrators of the various health and social services boards across the territory. That is the first thing we’re doing. Secondly, we’re going out to the communities and talking not only to the public but also the leadership, to look at areas that they think would be the best for their communities. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final supplementary, Mr. Moses.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In regard to prevention, earlier to my Member’s statement I made a comment that the departments should work more collectively together. Has the Minister of Health worked with other areas such as the Department of Justice and how can they work together so that funding is not duplicated for some of these prevention programs? Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, an example of the departments working with other departments is like going into the schools and providing money to the schools and having something like Drop the Pop promotion in schools that we’re going to go into with. Like I indicated, they’ll be launching that in 40 schools this week and next week. Yes, our intention is to work on the prevention with the Department of MACA because of the youth and also in the schools, education. Yes, I think we’re also working on some other areas with the Department of Justice that may not be exactly with health promotion for children, but we’re working with them as well. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The honourable Member for Mackenzie Delta, Mr. Blake.
