Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I stand here before you not just as the MLA for Range Lake but as a health care professional who’s been practicing here in the North for over 20 years and serving not only the needs of Yellowknife but pretty much the needs of all of the Northwest Territories and prior to 1999, Nunavut as well. So I stand here before you today as someone who I think has got a lot of vast experience when it comes to prescription drugs and health care.
I will not deny the fact that illicit drug use, tobacco, alcohol, these are all serious addictions out there that we see every day, and I don’t want to take anything away from those addictions out there, but what I was talking about in my Member’s statement earlier today is what I like to refer to as the quiet addiction. This is the addiction we don’t talk about as much, because we talk about the other ones that have so much more press time and media attention. That’s narcotic and opiate dependence that leads to dependency as well as addiction.
This is a serious issue that tends to go quietly and unannounced, and again, when you’re trying to get information about it, there is nothing out there. So I was very concerned when trying to look for information about it. We statistically have nothing out there to lead by. So my question for the Minister of Health here today is: Why is the department not looking more into the addictions of prescription narcotic abuse and why is this information not available to the people of the Northwest Territories?
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. The Minister of Health and Social Services, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The information is not available because the department does not track use of opiates. However, we do have the NWT Pharmacy Act which will give us the power to set up the regulations, but we don’t have the funding to set it up. Health Canada does track non-insured health benefits prescription use, if they’re going to that program to purchase the prescription drugs; but if they pay cash, we don’t track that either. Thank you.
Thank you. I appreciate the Minister for giving reference to the act. There’s no doubt that the topic of addictions is a high topic for the Members on this side of the House. You can only count on many hands how many times this has been brought up even in this Assembly here. But the idea about addictions is understanding where you start. We talked about emerging addiction areas; well, I don’t want to use the word emerging because I believe this has been around here not only for the short period but it’s been around here for a very long period of time. Given what was said here today and the response from the Minister, can myself as a Member and the people of the Northwest Territories get some reassurance and assurances that this information can be statistically gathered in the very near future? Thank you.
Thank you. Yes, through regulations we can gather the information. However, at this time, like I said, we haven’t gone through the act to gather the information. I’m told that information can be gathered. The electronic medical health records that we are starting to use now allows us to gather information in Yellowknife and Hay River at this time. We need to expand the electronic medical health records right across the Territories as a first step if we’re going to track all the prescription drug use across the Territories. For now we are capable of tracking in Yellowknife and Hay River.
Again I appreciate the Minister’s response on that. Can the Minister or his department give some idea of the timelines when these regulations might be altered or amended so that we can gather information throughout the Territories? As I said, this is not just isolated to urban Northwest Territories; I believe this issue is prevalent everywhere. Having an understanding of the timeline would definitely help prepare, with respect to addictions.
We will be working with our partners at the Bureau of Statistics. We’re going to include questions on prescription drug use the next time we do addictions surveys, the general addictions survey. That survey is scheduled to begin in late 2012.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final supplementary, Mr. Dolynny.
No further questions, Mr. Speaker.
The honourable Member for Deh Cho, Mr. Nadli.
