Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are addressed to the Minister of Health and Social Services. I found it very timely that he chose to make his Minister’s statement today on the Minister’s Forum on Addictions. I have some questions in that regard.
I’ve been listening to the Minister over the last few weeks. He’s made some comments and he’s referenced a number of times consultations around mental health and addictions programs and the strategic plan. He’s spoken of a group that is out for consultations and it’s clear to me now, although it wasn’t before, that he meant the Minister’s Forum on Addictions.
The forum has been referenced in the Mental Health and Addictions Plan, but there’s little other info that’s out there relative to the Minister’s Forum on Addictions.
My first question to the Minister would be whether or not there are terms of reference for the forum, and if so, are they available to the public.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The Minister of Health and Social Services, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, we have terms of reference and, yes, they are available to the public.
That will teach me to ask a yes or a no question. It would be very helpful if the Minister could advise the House and advise the general public how they could access these terms of reference which are available to them.
The other point I wanted to make is that over the years, certainly my few years here but in many years prior, the shelves of government offices are filled with reports, with consultations, results of talking to people, et cetera, et cetera. Certainly, I know that Health and Social Services, that department has done many studies and looked into, and they have many reports on mental health and addictions.
I’d like to know from the Minister why we now need a Minister’s Forum on Addictions. We have lots of studies out there. Why can we not use the information we’ve previously gathered? Have we not already asked and answered the questions this forum is going to ask?
I’m not sure that we’ve asked the right questions. As I indicated in my Member’s statement, I think we needed to go back out to the communities. At the very beginning of my position as Health and Social Services Minister, I travelled to, I think, 12 or 13 communities with an attempt to try to travel to all the communities in the North, and a common theme was developing in the communities, and the communities were indicating that they need to find a solution for their addiction issues in their communities. With that in mind, we’ve developed this forum to go back out to those people to see if they do have the solutions, and they’re going to provide that information to the forums.
I appreciate that maybe we haven’t asked the right questions, but I guess I have to go back to the information that we already have. Has the Minister done an analysis of all the reports which have been done over, say, the last 10 years, which would be full of answers to probably very similar questions? It makes me wonder what is so different about this particular forum, about the questions that we’re answering right now. Do we know that we have not asked these specific questions before?
I guess there are various ways that a department can go about collecting information and the most recent information in the field of addictions, things do change. There are up and down issues and trends on addictions and so on.
The main thing that we want to focus in on is alcohol. This is an alcohol forum. There is no indication to me from the Department of Health and Social Services that we had reports specific to the state of alcohol in the communities. We felt that right now is a good time to go out there and gather that information and see what the people have to say about how they wish to work in this area. There was no indication that the people were asked in the past on what they would do to combat the issue of alcohol in their communities.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I struggle with the fact that we’re going to go and ask people. The Minister says that we don’t really know the state of alcohol. I think we know all too well the state of alcohol in our communities. I think that we need to actually start doing something. I’d like to know from the Minister, come March 2013, when he’s got all these answers, what is he going to do in March 2013 to actually implement and start acting on our addictions problem.
When we get the information back from the communities, when the communities tell us that this is the solution, then we’re going to assume that those are going to be the solutions. One of the best ways that I found in my past to come up with a solution is to go ask where the problem is. This is what we’re doing. We’re going back to the communities and we’re asking them to come up with a solution. I think it’s worked in the past when this type of thing has been requested of the communities and the communities want to come up with the solutions. Once the recommendations, I guess we’ll call it at this time, are before us, then we’re going to take a look at reshuffling some of our budget.
Right now we’re spending $6 million in community counselling, we’re spending $2.2 million in a treatment centre that has a capacity under 50 percent. What we’re doing so far doesn’t seem to be really panning out for the people. Addictions are not changing. Addictions are, I think, increasing. Now we want to say, well, you give us a solution, you give us a recommendation, we’ll try to develop a solution together to bring that addictions issue down.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The Member for Deh Cho, Mr. Nadli.
