Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I look forward to this opportunity to ask questions to the Health Minister regarding crack and prescription drug use and what we are doing about it.
I was talking to my eight-year-old son yesterday, and this is no word of a lie and I dare anyone to counter that. He told me he heard about crack, and I’m telling you that was a shock to my wife and I to hear about it. We asked him what this is and he says, the kids talk about it at school. It’s not about one school, it’s the fact it upsets me and actually really ticks me off that my eight-year-old son is starting to understand what these things are.
So my question for the Health and Social Services Minister is: What is he doing to help people who suffer from crack and prescription drug addiction in the Northwest Territories? I want to hear what he’s doing about those types of problems. It really upsets me not only as a legislator, but as a parent. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The Minister of Health, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member is correct that these are two very serious issues. Crack and crack cocaine have caused all kinds of problems in all of the communities, small communities. Communities are trying to deal with it; people are trying to deal with it in various ways. There is something that an individual can get to a counsellor that we will send individuals for treatment for crack cocaine addictions.
Prescription drugs are a little bit different issue. Prescription drug addiction is a very hidden addiction, so it’s something that’s difficult to bring out into the public. People can say, well, that person sells crack, that person is on crack and that person is on crack, but it’s very difficult when it comes to prescription drugs to easily identify that. In those cases, it’s a lot of personal responsibility that individuals have to take and all we can do is get the messaging out there that we’re available to help. Thank you.
Thank you. Personal responsibility and sending people out for treatment, let’s follow that thread to see where we go.
We send people out and we have contracts down south and I’m aware that they’re coming up in the new year. Let’s start with finding out first what the success rate is of the people we send out of the Northwest Territories on these treatment programs. Thank you.
Again, success rate is something that’s very difficult to identify. I don’t have the information on the number of people who went out for crack cocaine addiction, came back and stayed clean. So I’m assuming that would be the success, because crack, unlike alcohol, is once you’re back into it, you’re back into it and you are no longer successful. So first we determine what success is and then we start looking at the different numbers. Thank you.
The citizens of Yellowknife feel very strongly about this, and I’m not trying to raise the ire of the Members here or certainly the public, but quite often you hear, when we call for a treatment centre here in Yellowknife, they say, well geez, the Legislative Assembly has an anti-Yellowknife attitude. Well, some days it really feels like that, but when they closed the Nats’ejee K’eh Centre, you think that they have an anti-treatment attitude. They’ve hurt Northerners. They spent a quarter of a million as a retainer for these treatment services down south.
What is the Minister willing to invest in the Northwest Territories to open up treatment programs for the people where they need it?
Thank you. We had allocated $2.2 million to run Nats’ejee K’eh. So if there’s a treatment program in the Northwest Territories that we consider to be a treatment program that is working well for the community, a treatment program that can retain their staff and that’s attractive to the people of the North, we would put that money into that. So I guess that’s what we’re willing to spend. We’re willing to spend whatever we were spending prior to the Nats’ejee K’eh closure. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Hawkins.
This government, this very government had spent upwards of $10 million in fire suppression in the Northwest Territories this year and successive years and years before that. We spend a measly $2 million or $2.2 million on addictions.
Can the Minister of Health and Social Services explain to me how we’re meeting the needs when we spend five times the amount on fires than we do putting out the fires of the cancer of addictions and prescription drugs when it’s hurting real people? Thank you.
Actually, we were spending $2.2 million on the treatment centre, but we have $6 million on community counselling and we have in and around $12 million coming from the federal government in the Wellness Fund. So that’s money that’s going into the wellness of people. So it’s actually not one-tenth or 20 percent of what we’re spending on fires, it’s more than that. Thank you.
