Mr. Speaker, in February 2020 I told this House a brief story. It was a weeklong conversation about one Northerner's challenge to access support services. Today, over two years later, Avery would still find the same barriers. Mr. Speaker, too many Northerners are falling through the cracks with the government's siloed approach to service delivery at the cost of residents' mental health, ability to thrive, and the government's bottom line.
We hear over and over again that the answer is integrated service delivery. But we also hear from the GNWT that we are years away from actually implementing integrated service delivery.
Take the example of integrated service delivery for child and family services. In 2019, this Assembly made it a mandate goal to develop an integrated service delivery approach by fall of 2021, but the business plans are only aiming to establish integrated service delivery demonstration sites in at least four communities by the end of this Assembly. And presumably other communities will have to wait even longer for an integrated child and family services.
But one of the most significant integrations, Mr. Speaker, is the siloed approach to income support and public housing.
The pace to actually implement integrated service delivery is deeply frustrating, and it causes huge challenges for effective program delivery and difficulty accessing supports. The GNWT currently spends over $700 million annually on social programs through Justice, Health, Housing, and Education, Culture and Employment. Each of these departments addresses a different aspect of a person's challenges but the siloed service delivery causes program duplication and the frequency and duration that the individual cycles through public systems of care. It means residents are not receiving personcentered care and the government is spending more down the road through cyclical and costly use of resources, and this decreases the window of opportunity an individual will permanently or successfully exit the system of crisis services.
I want to urge the government to prioritize and accelerate work to implement integrated service delivery. We need to at least connect Housing and ECE supports in the life of this Assembly to create more stability for Northerners struggling with access to basic human rights. Integrated service delivery meets northerners where they're at and brings together the social program departments and their frontline staff to coordinate plans of care and support residents with their actual needs. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member for Kam Lake. Members' statements. Member for Yellowknife North.
