Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are addressed to the Minister for Health and Social Services. I wanted to follow up on his Minister’s statement today.
I’m really pleased to hear that he will be later tabling the Mental Health Action Plan. It’s, I think, well known that our territory has many problems. We have people that suffer from mental health illnesses. We have people that suffer from mental health illnesses as a result of addictions. The Minister mentions in his statement that this is a three-year action plan. I believe it’s intended for 2012 to 2015. I appreciate that we have to start somewhere, but I’d like to ask the Minister what are we going to do beyond this three-year time period. What has the department got in place for long-term plans for a mental health and addictions strategy? Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The Minister responsible for Health and Social Services, Mr. Beaulieu.
Mahsi cho, Mr. Speaker. We’ve had many discussions about mental health and addictions since I’ve become the Minister of Health and Social Services. This action plan has been in the works for quite some time. The plan right now, as a department, we’re seeing something with a shorter time frame that’s more of an action plan rather than a strategy is something that we need in order to start to move forward and try to make some progress in the mental health and addictions field. This doesn’t mean that we will stop working on mental health and addictions at the end of three years. It is hoped, and I can confirm that for sure, by continuing to work with the departments and provide the information to the Member, that there will be something beyond 2015 as well. Thank you.
I appreciate the answer from the Minister, but I have to say that I think it’s going to take a lot longer than three years to fix the problems that we have within the territory. I appreciate that this is intended to be an action plan. There probably are very valid actions within there and things that we do need to do, but I have to ask the Minister, if we have actions that we are doing over the next three years that are unrelated to medium-term and long-term goals, which apparently we don’t have, I wonder whether or not we are doing bits and pieces without any end goal in sight. Do we really know where we are going? Do we know how we want to get there? I appreciate that something is going to be developed, but are we waiting until 2015 to develop our midterm and our end long-term plan? Thank you.
No, we are going to start this action plan and then we are going to start using the business planning process to either renew this action plan or build on to this action plan. We’ll see how this goes. We’ll have a good lay of the land on what we have out there as far as mental health and addiction issues and then, from there, we will build on something that is longer term. We are not going to start at the end of this, but we will start during this action plan. We will start to develop that longer-term strategy. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, thanks to the Minister. I have to reiterate I find it difficult to understand how we can put specific actions in place without knowing what our end goal is, without knowing where we are going.
In some of the media information that was provided to Members, it indicates that the plans are developed to respond to service gaps. I would like to know from the Minister, does this plan identify service gaps. If that’s the case, how is this plan addressing the service gaps that we know exist in our territory? Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, it’s fairly obvious what the issues are in mental health and addictions from our perspective. We are trying to develop a plan that moves forward. There are gaps in the system. That’s what we need to address. This action plan, we’re trying to develop something that moves us forward, gives us a better view of what those gaps are, what those issues are, and then the whole base that through business planning process we will be able to fill those gaps and develop something on the longer term.
We do actually know where we are trying to go. We have a pretty good idea that we have addiction issues now. We’re trying to address those issues for the future so that we have a healthier Northwest Territories. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Ms. Bisaro.
Mr. Speaker, I appreciate from the Minister that he knows where he wants to go. Maybe the department does, but I don’t see that written anywhere. That is a bit of my concern. I don’t know if this plan identifies where we want to go. To the service gaps, if they are identified in the plan, I would like to know from the Minister whether or not the gaps identified in the plan will be addressed by the actions that are going to happen over the next three years. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, perhaps the gaps that are easy to fill can be identified and done within the next three years with this action plan. I’m sure that there will have to be more resources put in or resources moved around. That’s part of the issue; is right now we’re not sure if we need a lot more resources, because the whole nature of a plan like this is so that in the future we are avoiding a lot of costs, a lot of health costs, a lot of costs on treatment and so on, because if we go into prevention, in the future we don’t have to treat.
I think this plan is going to give us at least the ability to start to look at filling the smaller gaps and then going through a business plan process, if there needs to be resources put in or whether the resources are going to be requested or moved around internally. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister Beaulieu. Mr. Bromley.
