Thank you, Mr. Speaker. For some time, I’ve been asking the various governments over the period of time as an MLA, and I’ll ask the Minister this question pertaining to the Department of Health and Social Services. The Stanton Hospital and other health facilities have a high population of Aboriginal people. I’ve been asking people within the positions of government, how can you get the Aboriginal foods into the hospitals, for example. What’s happened? Can we get our country foods into the hospitals in the Northwest Territories?
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Minister of Health, Mr. Abernethy.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member as well as other Members have actually asked this question before. Following up from those requests for information and the desire to have more traditional foods in our facilities, which we agree is an incredibly important thing to do, our traditional foods help to promote healing, healthy eating and all those types of things. So the Department of Health and Social Services is currently doing some research and developing an action plan to improve the availability of traditional foods within our facilities.
The Traditional Foods and Facilities Action Plan and Recommendations Report, we’re hoping to have that completed in January 2015 so that we can bring it to the Standing Committee on Social Programs for discussion.
The types of things that we want to see, or that you will see in that report, are some successes and lessons learned in other jurisdictions such as Alaska, Whitehorse and as well as Alberta. We’re also looking at new specifications regarding traditional food use, access to traditional food and costs of traditional foods and the use of federally inspected traditional foods. So there are lots of different options we’re exploring and current policies that some facilities already have. We’re hoping to bring all that information together in January and sharing it with committee so that we can move forward to find ways to provide more traditional food within our facilities throughout the Northwest Territories.
Mr. Speaker, I certainly want to wish the best of luck to this Minister, because in my tenure as an MLA I have been pushing this issue. There has been so much bureaucratic red tape, goobledy gah, that it doesn’t make sense. The people in my communities grew up on the traditional foods, they are in the hospital, what is so simple to boil fish, moose head and give it to them? They grew up on it, but we have all this red tape. The Minister is now going out and saying we’re going to do a review. I have been at this for 11 years, and our people are dying and they want their food in the hospital. Why can’t we do such a simple thing as the Government of the Northwest Territories bring the traditional foods into the hospital and serve them, because 65 percent of our patients are Aboriginal people and a high percentage of people who grew up on the land with this food. Let’s do the right thing; it’s a simple thing. I want to see action from this Minister.
Mr. Speaker, in order to provide the traditional foods in any of our facilities, we must have policies on how to secure, prepare and serve the traditional foods. We already are providing traditional foods in a number of our communities in a number of our facilities. For instance, at Jimmy Erasmus Seniors Home they serve traditional foods and they have a policy. The Inuvik long-term care prepares traditional food within the unit itself. The Avens has a policy for the preparation and serving of traditional food. The challenge there is that they have a private contractor providing food, so we may not be getting it as often as we would like. Stanton Territorial Health Authority also has a four-week rotational traditional foods menu, so they bring things in on Friday. I understand that the Member is saying that is not enough, we need to do more. The Northern Lights Elders Facility in Fort Smith regularly serves traditional foods. So we are providing traditional foods in a number of our communities.
I hear the Member loud and clear, we need to do more, which is why we are working on the Traditional Foods and Facilities Action Plan, which I am going to bring to you and committee after discussion on how we move forward.
But this isn’t without its barriers. Providing traditional food does have some challenges, and some of the challenges that we have experienced today are basically the availability of regional foods, the distance from local foods, the ability to prepare foods in a traditional way, harvesting costs and access to the equipment, and food services companies using only federally inspected food. So there are challenges. We are working through those. We will be coming back to committee, and I am looking forward to having further discussion as we move forward and provide traditional foods to the residents of the Northwest Territories within our facilities. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I look forward to some action here. It is very simple. The fall hunt just finished. Ask the communities, a lot of moose, caribou and fish. It’s very simple. We need it in Stanton. They are doing it in the regions; they are doing it in the communities. Ask the communities. Break through the red tape. We need moose meat. We need people to have their traditional foods in the hospitals. These are the very people that grew up on that.
Why are we making it so complicated? It is a crying shame. This government here is going to do another study. This is my third Assembly. It’s so difficult to put traditional foods in Stanton Hospital, but we can do other things so fast, but with the average of people in the…(inaudible)…it’s difficult. Why do you make it complicated for us? I appreciate the little bit of taste that we’re getting, but I’m speaking for the elders, the people who want boiled fish, want fish heads, want boiled meat, they want that. They don’t want cabbage because they say it tastes like paper. We are dealing with real people here.
I will ask the Minister again to put enough effort, to put some elbow grease behind this motion and this action plan and do it before we close this Assembly when the writ is dropped. That’s what I would like to see.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I have already indicated to the Member, we are going to have a Traditional Foods Facilities Action Plan and Recommendations, January 2015, for review by Regular Members and consideration so that we can move forward and do exactly what the Member is asking us to do. January 15th is well before the writ drops in the 17th Legislative Assembly.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Yakeleya.
Again – and other Members can contest this – we have seen a lot of action plans. Action plans are sometimes five, 10, 20 years. I am asking this one here for the sake of the people in the small communities, when they come to Stanton Hospital that they can have the traditional foods served to them, not once a week. Residential school days are over. We want them to have it every day. I want to ask the Minister to put some muscle behind the action plan to say this is what we’re going to do: every day of the week we’ll have some traditional food served to our people. If you need some help, we have a lot of people here that can help the Minister.
Mr. Speaker, this is something that is important, I clearly hear the Member. I have heard it from other Members, and we are looking forward to bringing the action plan forward and getting their weight behind the action plan so that we can make some changes in traditional food provisions in the Northwest Territories.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.
