Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It’s great to be back and it’s hard not to notice your brand-new moccasins today. Looking good, my friend, looking good.
Mr. Speaker, earlier this summer, and in stunning fashion, our Minister of Health and Social Services made a unilateral decision to cease funding to our only territorial residential addictions treatment facility.
I can assure the people of the Northwest Territories, if this was a complete surprise, you were not alone. We all know that drug and alcohol addictions are a very serious scourge in every community, large and small. Addictions are an immense personal problem in the lives of many of the people, including our students at school. Addictions also place an incredible burden on this government, particularly in health and social services, justice, housing and education. It’s hard to quantify what addictions cost the GNWT, but some have speculated it to be more than $100 million a year.
By human nature, we want to believe in the good that is achieved through research. So last year the Health Minister tabled an Action Plan on Mental Health and Addictions, then there was a long-awaited report on the Minister’s Forum on Addictions and Community Wellness. This forum was touted as what the people want. Like many, I was impressed, yet months later I’m questioning whether we’re using these reports as a roadmap to reducing addictions and helping the people of the Northwest Territories.
Honestly, I’ve looked through both documents in detail and neither report mentioned any need to close the Nats’ejee K’eh Treatment Centre. In fact, these reports say quite the opposite, making recommendations for better coordination with the interagency representatives and developing mandatory six-month aftercare programs, but nothing about closing, and definitely nothing about its employees or clients being at risk as the Minister has referenced in the media.
Not only is there no detox centre, there is no in-territory treatment centre either. Instead the people are left with the second empty treatment centre in 14 years with no indication of what will be done with the building.
I stand before this House, before the people of the Northwest Territories, struggling to reconcile the Minister’s action plan for mental health and addictions. We clearly do not have the services we need to deal with the many gaps of our addictions and wellness programs.
We are failing our people who need the proper medically controlled detoxification program. We are failing our youth who need specific programs designed for them. We are failing people who need specialized treatments for crack cocaine addiction, solvent abuse and prescription drug abuse, and we are failing a large percentage of our people who don’t fit in on-the-land and mobile treatment models.
Mr. Speaker, I seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement.
---Unanimous consent granted
The verdict is out. The people want answers. The people deserve answers to these addiction questions. In the spirit of transparency, I will be asking the Minister of Health, the man with the plan, to please enlighten us with his vision later today. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. The Member for Deh Cho, Mr. Nadli.
