This is to Minister of Health and Social Services. According to the Office of the Auditor General Report, the Department of Health and Social Services does not do enough to provide residents with accessible, coordinated, and culturally safe addiction services. It is not clear from the department's work plan how it intends to address this situation in a meaningful way. Will the Minister commit to working with Indigenous governments to develop a process of consultation and engagement with communities and Indigenous governments outside its Indigenous advisory board? Thank you.
Thank you, Member. Minister of Health and Social Services.
Thank you, Madam Speaker. Madam Speaker, we have not yet heard back from the Standing Committee on the Office of the Auditor General's Report on addictions and aftercare treatment. So that report has not yet been tabled. But I will say, of course, we have accepted all the recommendations. The committee is considering a work plan attached to that. It does not, to the best of my knowledge, anticipate that we are going to disband the Indigenous Advisory Council, which now works with NTHSSA or that we would replace them with Indigenous governments. If I understand the question correctly, we are not planning restructuring; we're planning program responses. Thank you.
What funding and process mechanisms will be put in place to ensure community and client guidance translates into improvement on cultural safety? Thank you.
Yes, thank you, Madam Speaker. Madam Speaker, the cultural safety division of the department, which is called community, culture and innovation has a mandate to help with all programs and services to ensure that they are culturally safe and antiracist. So that would be in place in any initiatives that are put in place. At this point, the asks are, I'm going to say, primarily processoriented with a view to collecting better data so that we know and we have a better idea of what the outcomes are, and we're certainly committed to doing that work. We want to be able to show that what we're doing is working. Thank you.
Thank you. Final supplementary. Member for Monfwi.
Thank you, Madam Speaker. How will addiction recovery aftercare supports and services being developed by the Department of Health and Social Services engage with a leverage communitybased resources such as elders or youth? Thank you.
Yes, thank you, Madam Speaker. Madam Speaker, I have not directly consulted elders on any of these initiatives. As I say, they're not really new program initiatives. They're important things, but not necessarily the kind of things we would consult on, like disaggregating data. So we have regular meetings with the Indigenous governments through bilateral conversations and also through the NWT Council of Leaders. There are elders sometimes there. Certainly the Indigenous governments come with questions for health and questions about addictions, and we do our best to work with them and meet them where they're at, knowing that communitybased solutions are usually the best solutions. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister. Final supplementary. Member for Monfwi.
Will the Minister of Health and Social Services provide an update to explain her rationale for choosing not to restore contract relations with Poundmaker's Lodge despite the clear and immediate need for the facilitybased addiction treatment services they provide NWT residents? Thank you.
Yes, thank you, Madam Speaker. Madam Speaker, I'm not planning to provide any more information than I have already provided about the contract with Poundmaker's Lodge. It ends at the end of this month.
We have five other treatment options that residents can go to. There are three in Alberta, one in BC, and one in Ontario, as well as they can stay home and use the community counselling service, the community on-the- land programs, and so on. So while we are not going to continue with Poundmaker's, we do have those other options. And recognizing that we don't have a specific Indigenous option equivalent to Poundmaker's, we will be advertising for a service provider with a specialty in Indigenous healing, and that RFP is set to go out by the end of the year. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Member for Frame Lake.
