Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Could the Minister give us an idea of where these children are with regard to southern placements and how many of them are there?

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Mr. Handley.

Mr. Chairman, there are 34 children who are in southern placements. Thirteen of them are in the Bosco Homes, one in a place called Dube's, there are seven in Parkland, there are seven in Ranch Ehrlo, and six in Wood's Home. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Handley. Mr. Krutko.

Could the Minister elaborate a little more with regard to the 34? What do they provide that we cannot provide here in the Northwest Territories?

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Mr. Handley.

Mr. Chairman, maybe I will ask the Minister of Health and Social Services if he can provide more detail on what the services are. Certainly it is specialized services that we would not have in the North, but I will ask the Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Handley. Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the kind of specialized services depend on the individual child. The facilities, depending which facility we are talking about, will deal with moderate to extreme behavioural problems. They will deal with children who have been diagnosed with conduct disorders and other related disorders that require very specialized supervision, access to psychiatrists and psychologists and therapeutic social workers and specialized schools that can deal with the behaviour as well as the educational requirements of the children.

It also may be due to the fact that there is no space in the North, but mainly it is for the specialized reasons that I have outlined. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Minister made a comment that there are no specialized areas in the North to deal with that. Have we considered looking at developing those specialized programs and having them delivered in the Northwest Territories? I think that in most cases you talk about psychologists and psychiatrists and these other professions. I think if we have the ability to deliver those programs in the North we should do so.

That for me is important. We have seen closures in our health centres, closures of different wards, because of not having the professional people in the North. I think that as a government, before we start looking at sending people to southern institutions that we see exactly what we are doing to, if anything, bring in people who are in southern institutions back to the North.

I would like to ask the Minister, have you looked at the cost implications or the ability to implement these programs in the Northwest Territories?

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, this is an issue that is constantly under evaluation. The number of children in care fluctuates. Sometimes it is for child welfare reasons, sometimes it may be for medical reasons. In fact, over the last 15 years there have been just that such repatriation.

The territorial treatment centre was in fact set up to repatriate some of the services. There are problems trying to set up highly specialized care facilities in the North with the difficulty of obtaining the kind of professional resources that we need and having to be able to use them fully on an ongoing basis. It is the same with health services, that you cannot afford to duplicate some of the very high-end, technically advanced, medically complex services that are provided down south. We have done repatriations on the medical side as well, some with success, some, because of the complexity and the requirements for very specialized care, did not work as well as we had anticipated. We are always trying to keep as many children in the North as possible. Unfortunately, the demand and the requirement for specialized services have continued to be on an incline. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Does the Minister have a general age breakdown of the number of these children? What are their ages? How many of them?

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, we have a breakdown as to the facilities that the children are in. There is some other personal information we can give, demographic information, possibly age. I do not have it with me. I can commit to get it to the Member. Mr. Handley has already quoted where the children are, keeping in mind that is basically a snapshot because children are moving in and out of the system and facilities depending on the range of their treatment and extent of the treatment. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Mr. Krutko.

Thank you. The Minister touched on the geographical and regional breakdown. Do you have any idea of how many children are from the Inuvik region or the Mackenzie Delta region?

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Mr. Miltenberger.

Once again, I do not have that level of detail, but I can give the Member a breakdown not only of where the children are in facilities, but where they are from.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Mr. Handley.