Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In my Member’s statement today I talked about the opportunity here for hope, purpose at the downtown day shelter. My questions, of course, are directed to the Minister of Health and Social Services. My question specifically is this: What services, such as addictions treatment or employability type of programs, would he be willing to do as some outreach to help capture some of the potential and give people a bit of hope and opportunity for the future there? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The Minister responsible for Health and Social Services, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I can’t come up with all of the services that would be offered in the shelter, off the top of my head, but I can say that the day shelter is a project that has a committee overseeing any of the projects and so on. The committee has members from the YK Health and Social Services, BHP Billiton, City of Yellowknife and our department. We can work on putting something together and provide to the Member that we can lay out what services could be offered to the individuals that frequent that shelter. Thank you.
A number of weeks ago I was there on a Sunday dropping off some food and people were openly drinking. Does the GNWT support that type of behaviour, and if they do, if you could put that officially clearly on the record? And if they don’t, my question is: What do they plan to do about that particular problem? Thank you.
The department does not support public drinking. This is not supposed to be a drinking establishment. It was some place to provide a day shelter for individuals that had nowhere else to go during the day. If this is officially a complaint that people are drinking in the day shelter, I will contact the department, the department will make contact with the RCMP and the RCMP can check it out. Thank you.
Will the Minister of Health and Social Services be willing to provide some access services for people to get into the addictions stream for treatment? In other words, would he be able to put some type of counselling process down there to be able to offer people addiction treatment opportunities? Thank you.
I know that the community counselling services are available to everyone in the communities, so also available to everyone in Yellowknife. These members that are going there, we could maybe provide some information to them, advising them that counselling for addictions is available near where the day shelter is, and that perhaps that would be a method of informing them, and also getting them to go take counselling within the city. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Your final, short supplementary, Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m having trouble following his last answer. Is the Minister saying services are available and he can establish them in this particular facility and in a manner that could encourage people to take this path? Thank you.
I don’t think the counsellors are going into the day shelter to counsel the people that are there, but there are services available in the community. What I’m saying is that we can advise the people that are there, that are staying there during the day, the individuals or the organization that’s running the shelter, we can provide them information on what counselling services are available, and they can provide that information to the people that are resident there during the day.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The Member for Inuvik Boot Lake, Mr. Moses.
