Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to ask the Minister of Health and Social Services if his department has ever done a cost factor of somebody who has abused alcohol or drugs. What has it cost this government? For example, it costs about $90,000 a year to house somebody in our justice system if that person is in there for an alcohol-related crime. Has the Minister done a comprehensive cost factor in regard to someone using and abusing alcohol in our communities?
We just know that it does cost a lot of money in a lot of areas. Like the Member said, if a person was to stay in a corrections facility for an entire year because of abuse of alcohol, it could cost the government $90,000 to house them in there. We know that a high percentage of the hospital stays are due to alcohol abuse. We know the costs at the health centres due to alcohol abuse. We know that a lot of the money for counselling that is spent on counselling people at the community level is alcohol abuse. We know that at Nats'ejee K'eh another $2 million is all as a result of alcohol abuse. It is a substantial cost to the system. I don’t have the figure with me now, but I’m pretty sure that it would be fairly simple for us to pull that information together.
I look forward to the information the Minister is going to send over to the House in regard to the cost factor. It’s about dollars and cents. Again, I go back to the point Mrs. Groenewegen made earlier that it’s not normal in our communities to see people drinking on the roads, fighting, swearing. It’s just not normal.
I want to ask the Minister, there’s an elder in Fort Good Hope that said there’s a miracle standing right before you. He said, I haven’t drank in 10 months. It’s a miracle that I’m not drinking. He said, it’s just common sense to take our people out onto the land.
If it costs that much in our system, could the Minister look and see if a program for the people, for the Sahtu communities that makes sense to take people out on the land to look at a recovery program where, out on the land, it’s normal for us to be a family?
As I indicated earlier, that was a common theme for the small communities that we visited, that they felt that treatment, on the land programs that they would do with the people that were suffering from addictions, families, elders, youth, was the way to go. The department has made available through the authorities $25,000 to any community that wants to put a program together for treatment on the land. Some communities have taken advantage of that. We think that in some of the communities that is a way to go. One thing was that the communities felt that wasn’t enough money. That’s one of the things we’re hoping to get from this addictions forum in communities that want to go that way. We may be able to move money from other communities that don’t want to treat their people on the land. This is something we want to look at. There is some money available for that.
I had some research done and it said that 42 percent of all our youth aged between 15 and 24 binge drink. Binge drinking is five or more drinks that they’re taking at one time. We have a serious problem. It’s coming in the next five, 10, 15 or 20 years from now.
I want to ask the Minister, would he look at Nats'ejee K'eh, only having a 46 percent occupancy rate, would he look at Nats’ejee K’eh being designated within the life of this government, or sooner, as a youth alcohol and drug treatment centre.
I’ve had one discussion with the forum here in Yellowknife at their inaugural meeting, and I indicated to them that one of the things I would like them to look at is change in the type of treatment that is available at Nats’ejee K’eh. One of the things that I asked them to look at was a block of time where the youth can utilize the treatment centre, making sure that they have the proper counsellors in there and have one block of time, probably in the summertime, for the youth to be able to attend treatment at Nats’ejee K’eh. We are looking at that.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary. Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, 28 percent of our general population binge drink. Binge drinking is not normal and it’s not normal for us. Growing up in our communities we have seen that. We thought that was normal. We thought that was okay.
Can the Minister outline any type of plan to work with us to tell the communities and show the communities that binge drinking in our communities in the North is not normal? What kind of campaign does he have in place for us to work with them?
I’m hoping that this is the type of information that can be brought back from the alcohol forum with the community indicating that they have high incidence of alcoholism in the community, and this is how they hope to address the issue. I would like to see the work of the forum before I can say that this is what I’m going to do.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The Member for Hay River North, Mr. Bouchard.
