Mahsi cho, Mr. Speaker. In my Member’s statement I spoke of addictions in the small communities. I have questions for the Minister of Health and Social Services. Mr. Speaker, does the Department of Health and Social Services have a strategy to address the issue of heavy alcohol consumption in the small communities? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The honourable Minister responsible for Health and Social Services, Ms. Lee.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We have various components of the programs that we have for the issue that the Member is raising. We do provide assistance for residential programming, whether within the NWT, Nats’ejee K’eh, or outside of the NWT or some of the community programs. We have mental health and addictions workers. We’ve spent $6 million and we have 62 people working in that area right up to more acute care right out of the hospital. So we have a vast spectrum of services that we provide on this issue. Thank you.
Thank you. The issue of addictions varies from community to community and what I think the Minister and the department need to do is to develop a specific community-by-community strategy to combat alcohol addictions, and need to consult. I’d like to ask the Minister if using money for those programs, start a process of consulting community governments and local stakeholders and actually develop a strategy for each community on a strategy on addictions and wellness. Thank you.
Thank you. I don’t have all of the information for all of the communities in the Territories in front of me, but for Lutselk’e we provide $186,000 for Lutselk’e mental health and addictions. We also provide $23,000 for Lutselk’e cultural programs; $76,876 for Deninu K’ue First Nation to fund their addiction counsellor position in Fort Resolution, and in addition we provided $23,000 to Deninu K’ue First Nation for youth addiction initiatives. That’s just an example of the different programming funding that we provide to smaller communities.
I take the Member’s point that maybe we should look at this and work with the community to see how it is working and if we can do something differently and get input from the community. I’d be happy to do that.
To start with, can the Minister have her department facilitate, coordinate some community meetings with the end means of developing some sort of community strategy on addictions and using some of the money she’s indicated already to begin the process of developing? I think that the community will build some momentum towards addressing addiction issues.
I would be happy to make the commitment to ask the staff to maybe start discussing with the Member’s constituency; seeing as we have 30 communities and we can’t start them all at once. I’d be happy to do that.
I do want to note that we are doing some work in the North, as I indicated earlier. We’ve been working with GTC and IRC and we are making some progress in that area. I am planning on making an announcement on that which is more community-based. We are doing that work but we have a vast Territory and we have very regional, different, unique characteristics. I agree with the Member that we need to be flexible in how we work with our communities and regions.
Thank you, Ms. Lee. Final supplementary, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Will the Minister consider shifting resources, both human and financial, in the area of addictions as opposed to residential treatment to community-based treatment in order to provide much needed support at the community level?
Yes, I am willing to look at that. We need to be mindful of the fact, though, that addictions and mental health programming needs to have a spectrum of services and there is a place for residential and more acute care. We have been looking at some of the money we are spending on sending people down south to institutional settings and we have been refocusing our energy on seeing if we can use that resource better within the Territories. This is what we are doing in the North. So yes, I’d be happy to discuss that further with the Member.
Thank you, Ms. Lee. The honourable Member for Nunakput, Mr. Jacobson.
