Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We come to these sessions several times a year and express our concerns from our home communities and our region. Some of our concerns are serious in that we bring them up every time we are here, and hoping and demanding the government act upon their commitments.
One of these issues is a lack of counsellors and social workers. Some of the communities never have access to counsellors, social workers, or the system lacks necessary resources and the effort seems unnoticeable, and that seems a shame. All across the Territory, communities, government organizations are saying the same thing: the community’s number one problem is not enough counselling support. As a government, we must provide proper services that are needed in the community. The fact that communities lack real support for people returning from substance abuse treatment.
Centralization of these services does not work. People can no longer go to the Territorial Treatment Centre and then go back to their communities while all of the support systems are in the major centres, Mr. Speaker.
The solution to this is to provide the services in the communities. Social workers and counsellors work in Inuvik and are supposed to be servicing the communities, but when talking to front-line workers in the community, they have never heard of visits of that nature.
What our communities need are facilities that people can go to without the huge paperwork and long waits. A small, fully functional, around-the-clock, fully equipped addictions centre with nurses and counsellors is what we need.
The Beaufort-Delta Social Services Authority and mental health addictions services office have operations in the Inuvik Regional Hospital. The office offers counselling programs for clients, people coping with loved ones dealing with drug and alcohol addictions or other social problems.
In order to receive service, we must see a nurse to be referred to a doctor and wait for the doctor’s visits in the community. People with real problems, and often very complicated problems, have nowhere to go and no one to talk to. This contradicts the commitments made by previous governments and this government.
Mr. Speaker, I seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement.
---Unanimous consent granted.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thank you, colleagues. Capacity building with real social supports is very important and it’s very critical that government commits and delivers the required support, not just deliver the rhetoric on local communities. Mr. Speaker, I will have questions for the Minister of Health and Social Services at the appropriate time. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Jacobson. The honourable Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.
