Mr. Speaker, Members of the Executive Council, fellow Members of the Legislative Assembly, I am pleased to move the motion to establish the special committee on health and social services. This motion is presented partly in response to concerns raised about social service delivery models and departmental administration, and partly in an effort to go beyond merely solving specific problems in isolation. Residents of the Northwest Territories expect and should receive services that are conducive to promoting a healthy life style physically, mentally and socially. We must attempt to deal with social problems in a holistic manner if we are to provide our constituents with a healthy living and social environment. We must promote interaction between departments in the delivery of all health and social services, and not confine or apportion responsibility to one single department. We must go beyond current models and be forward-thinking in our approach to the growing social problems faced by the people in the Northwest Territories
today. We have to be creative in our prevention models while ensuring an effective way of dealing with current problems.
To be truly effective, we have to allow communities to fully participate in the decision-making process and allow them to take ownership of programs. What we ought to be delivering to our constituents is a mechanism by which communities can heal themselves through methods that are tailored to their needs, not the needs of the bureaucracy. We need to hear form the elders and youth and all our people in the communities. We need to build a new vision of social service delivery models based on some of the traditions which our people have used to help the needy. We need a northern approach and this can only be built by listening, and I believe much of this listening has never been adhered to before.
We have the ability to deliver these mechanisms. We have a devolution policy developed in 1988 and recently cited by the Government Leader as a way to be more effectual. We must respond now despite the hard economic times. To simply ignore the critical concerns compounds our problems. What will be the cost, ultimately, if we fail to act now? We need functioning, productive, healthy communities to promote economic growth and to maintain the unique social and cultural fabric of the North. We must afford our communities every advantage to achieve maximum benefits and realize their potentials in this effort.
Here are a few of the issues which the special committee could deal with. Financial controls for social service programs, general administrative and policy deficiencies in the departments, general program deficiencies in the departments, general deficiencies and other aspects of the social safety net which falls outside the specific mandate of Health and Social Services.
Mr. Speaker, we also address the reasons for asking you to support the establishment of a special committee rather than some other mechanism. Public inquiries tend to be costly and often are limited in the scope of issues which can be dealt with. I do not believe it will be the appropriate vehicle for generating public comment on general social problems. A ministerial policy or administrative review can be cost-effective and expedient, but generally limits public participation. We do not need advice solely from within departments through advisors. We need advice and input from communities.
A third option would be to utilize various standing committees to review different related matters. The disadvantage of course is that we fractionalize and limit our review of general social problems. A special committee has many advantages and few disadvantages. All aspects of service delivery models can be addressed in totality. A special committee can consider interdepartmental mandates and provide an opportunity to gather support from the public.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to make a few comments about what I see is the proposed process. This process should not be that costly, not like other special committees that we have had in the past. We can utilize the services of all the MLAs and many of whom have expressed their willingness to participate in this exercise. MLAs can report at open meetings to the special committee or at meetings in their constituencies or regions. We may be able to set up a toll free line and not all committee Members would have to travel, maybe only a couple in each region.