Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Last week the Minister of Justice tabled the NWT coroner’s report here in the House and it was one report that I kind of take into consideration when we’re looking at creating legislation or looking at ways we can help these affected families move forward. After he tabled the document, I was also very pleased to attend a meet and greet with the coroners of the Northwest Territories.
Currently, there are about 34 of them in the NWT doing really great work. These individuals go above and beyond the call of duty outside of a regular job in most cases. They get call-outs in the middle of the night, sometimes on the weekends, to go and do work, and in some cases the incidents that they go see are directly related to them, whether they are family, friends, relatives, and it can be very hard on them.
One of the training opportunities they did this past weekend was something in the area of compassion fatigue, to ensure that our coroners get the proper services and counselling that they need and how to deal with these kinds of issues.
It was really great to see that the RCMP was there as well as the Workers’ Safety and Compensation Commission being. Like I said, these coroners go above and beyond to do their jobs, and in the uniqueness of our small communities, it can be very hard for these individuals to do their jobs.
Looking at the coroner’s report, one thing that I’d really like to address – and I will be asking questions on it today – is the number of cases that we have dealing with suicides. Once again, this report signified and showed that in the Beaufort-Delta we are leading again in the area of suicides, something not to be proud of. Actually, it is not only in the suicide area, it’s in homicides, accidents.
One thing is that in the coroner’s reports indicate, not this year but in the previous years, going back to 2009, alcohol and drugs was a big factor. At what point is this government going to address these issues, so that when we see the 2014 Coroner’s Report, we’re not going to have a high incidence of suicide rates in the Beaufort-Delta region again, and that any of the issues or any of the statistics in the report aren’t going to be associated with alcohol and drugs? We have to take a big stance in that area. Like I said, I go back to 2009, and in most of the high cases of suicide, a lot of it is directly related to alcohol and drugs.
I will be asking the Minister of Justice as well as the Minister of Health and Social Services how we are affecting this and how we are changing things for the Beaufort-Delta. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Moses. Member for Range Lake, Mr. Dolynny.
