Thank you, Mr. Speaker. You’re hearing that there’s a theme here today, and we’re speaking about mental health and addictions in the Northwest Territories. It’s a sad day that we have to speak about this again. I think this is our second or third time that we’ve come to this government talking about the importance of getting a treatment centre or getting some kind of programs in place for people that are battling addictions and have no place to turn except go down south without the support of their family and their friends.
I’ve spoken up in this House before, where I’ve talked about reports that have been shelved. A lot of people have done good work for these reports that have been shelved and no action has been taken to them. I looked on the website dating back to 2002, looking at some recommendations that came out of that report, which was, back then, entitled, A State of Emergency. Back in 2002 it was an emergency then and it’s an emergency now. We’re getting into more and more worst-case scenarios that are happening in the NWT. All you have to do is look at the coroner’s reports of the last few years and all the deaths that have occurred that were alcohol related.
Back in 2002 there were recommendations looking for medical detox services across the Territories, yet, we still don’t have any. There was also talk about having mobile treatment back in 2002, and yet we have to spend all this money to go out to hear it again in 2013. They also talked about youth in crisis and affecting working with our youth. Our youth are in crisis. Speaking of reports, there was another report in the last Assembly, called Forging the Future, where our young leaders, our youth leaders brought to this government two recommendations. One of those recommendations was the recommendation for a youth treatment centre, and yet we don’t see any action taken on that.
This government has been doing a lot of investment in a lot of different areas in the short time that we’ve all been here together in the 17th Legislative Assembly, but we’ve got to start looking at investing in our biggest and our greatest resource in the NWT, and that’s our people. We have to start investing in our people and making them healthy. We want a healthy economy, but we have to have healthy people. When we get more money and continue to allow these oil and gas companies to come in and do work, we’re not meeting the needs, because our people aren’t healthy to work in those companies. It’s about time we should start investing in our people and get them healthy so that they can be part of society and be part of the workforce.
Thank you, Mr. Moses. The Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.
