Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It has been a long, cold and difficult winter for a lot of people and occasionally people fall on hard times and sometimes tragedies beset people in the North. We are really one big family here. We know most of the people in our constituencies.
I’ve recently had a situation where a family that has been struggling has just been pushed over the edge, I suppose, financially by the cost of maintaining a home during this very long, cold winter. This family is supporting an adult with disabilities in their own home at a very, very minimal level of support from this government.
If this family were not caring for their son who is disabled, and if he was in assisted living or in a southern institution, our government would not think twice to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to support this individual, but he’s being cared for by his own family. His family is in distress.
Have we ever or do we have any kind of a benevolent emergency compassionate fund whereby if Members and Ministers agreed that there was a candidate that was a case where someone needed a little support to carry on and not lose their home or have their power turned off or in some way have something catastrophic happen, is there such a fund in this government?
I attend a church in Hay River and it’s just a small church with a $200,000 a year budget. We even have a benevolent fund for if somebody shows up on our doorstep and is in serious trouble.
I’d like to know, has the government ever had something like this? Is there anything like this available? Thank you.
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Minister of Health, Mr. Abernethy.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We don’t currently have a fund that I think exactly matches the type of situation that the Member is talking about, but I think that goes a lot to the types of questions that Mr. Bromley was asking yesterday about the poverty trap and trying to find ways to support families so we don’t drive them into that area.
I have committed to working with the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment and the other social envelope members to start working to see if we could find some ways to address this to make sure this type of thing doesn’t happen and we could provide supports where possible. But right now there is no fund that clearly fits the type of situation the Member is describing.
Sometimes it is a very small amount of money and it is a very small amount of support that a family or an individual needs to get over a rough patch due to circumstances beyond their control. Usually time is of the essence in these instances as well.
I’d like to ask the Minister, is he aware if there ever has been such a thing? I remember, years ago there used to be some kind of a compassionate fund where, say, if a family was indigent or was falling on hard times that our government would pay to help family members go to a funeral or to the bedside of a dying family member or to purchase a casket if they had lost a loved one. There used to be a fund like that. I’d like to ask the Minister if he’s aware of it. Thank you.
I am aware of a situation that has come up recently very similar to the one the Member is describing and it was referenced in that discussion that there used to be a fund that provided supports very similar to the type that the Member is talking about. That fund no longer exists. But it is one of the items that I’ve put on the agenda for the Ministers’ Social Envelope Committee and we will be having further discussions, and I look forward from committee as we move forward. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
We are a small government but big in the fact that we have a fairly large budget. We have a small constituency overall in the Northwest Territories. I would certainly support something like that. Not something to be dipped into on a regular basis, but when there is an agreed emergency I think that we should have something like that. It’s very difficult for us, as MLAs, to get back to our constituents and say, sorry, there’s nothing that this government can do for you. We all know these people. Often they’re people who have grown up here in the North and are well known to all us.
I’d just like to ask the Minister if he will work with Regular Members, like myself, to come up with something so that these kinds of disasters can be avoided, which are going to end up costing this government a whole lot more money when these people fail to be able to carry on. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, I like working with committee, I am committed to working with committee, and I will work with committee. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
