Date
August
20
2007
Members Present
ITEM 1: PRAYER
Assembly Members
Debates of August 20, 2007 (day 13)
Topics
Statements
Member’s Statement On Suicide Awareness And Prevention Programs
Robert Villeneuve
Tu Nedhe
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I would just like to raise the very serious issue of suicide awareness and prevention here in the NWT. This issue has been raised many times here in the past four years, Mr. Speaker, but recently has become a very sensitive issue for myself due to the fact that my family has been affected by the suicide of a close relative.
We are all aware that the NWT has more than two times the national average of suicide rates in Canada. We have not seen any real improvement in programs and services related to suicide awareness, suicide prevention or aftercare services provided by this government over the last five years.
There is definitely a real need for ongoing community awareness, community counselling, and training to individuals and affected families who have been devastated by incidents of suicide. Even years after, families are still feeling the effects of such incidents, especially how it’s affecting their families and siblings of suicide victims. As they grow up with these dark memories and without any good counselling or support networks to turn to, they may take it upon themselves to resolve their issues themselves by contemplating suicide themselves, Mr. Speaker.
In my constituency, many people have been raising this issue and have been working to develop some on-the-land programs to address suicide amongst our youth, only to be informed that there is not even health and social services dollars to move forward with a plan or there are just too many hurdles in government to get access to dollars. Mr. Speaker, that has to change. If we do not take this issue more seriously for the future, Mr. Speaker, then the talk amongst our youth about suicide will no longer be about just talk, Mr. Speaker; it will be acted upon more often. To me, this is a very serious trend that we, as a government, seem to be taking just too lightly. We have to act now to address this issue and I encourage this government to seriously review their suicide prevention programs in all of our smaller communities across the NWT. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
---Applause