Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, in the earlier years, if my memory serves me correctly in the life of the 14th Assembly, there were discussions in the 13th Assembly on the possibility of establishing an office of the child advocate. At this point, there are no formal plans in the works to set up any kind of independent body as it pertains to child welfare matters. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Ms. Lee.

I think the office of the child advocate has been proposed in this Assembly. As far as some of the Members here, it was supposed to be a very live issue, but it appears from the Minister's statement, that it's not. It's something we will have to remember to follow through with.

I just want to use the remaining moments of my time to speak about something that we were discussing earlier in the day, which has to do with the $250 medical travel co-payment. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate that a lot of this has been said, and I haven't had a chance to look at all the words that the Minister spoke, but I think if he would look at the transcript tomorrow morning, he would find quite a contradiction in what he stated this morning. One of them that I remember is the fact that somehow we cannot discontinue this because it's a revenue source item and second had to do with something like you can't charge the federal government... We have to charge everybody equally I think is what he was saying. So he gets some money from the federal government who pay for some co-payments under non-insured health benefits, I am assuming, and then GNWT pays for their employees and some other companies and municipalities will pay for their employees. So he seems to understand the concept of fairness, but what he doesn't seem to appreciate is this is all done on the backs of very few individuals who aren't covered anywhere. Those who are working, who are self-employed or who are working in low paying jobs that have no insurance. So to place such a burden to recover the costs, even if it's big money, $1 million, in the big scheme of things, it's probably not a lot of money. To do it on the backs of those who can least afford it, I would really like to have the Minister reconsider that. Perhaps if he reads the transcript tomorrow morning, he will see the contradiction that he expressed. I want to give the Minister another chance to explain that. Thank you.

Thank you. Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I am aware of the concern as it relates to the $250 co-payment and the fact that there is a specific segment of the population that doesn't have third-party coverage. We have engaged in a process to try to address that issue. I am prepared to work with the committee, the Social Programs committee, once they have had a chance to look at what we have pulled together so far. If there is a way we can move this to some sort of satisfactory resolution and come up with a plan that we can take to Cabinet and agree to, then I would be willing to do that. The intent is at the end of the day to try to make sure that that gap is closed and that that particular segment of the population as outlined by Ms. Lee is not disadvantaged or without the level of service that the majority of other Northerners do. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The Chair will recognize Mr. Lafferty.

Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, if I may just deal with the last question first, the question of the $300,000 that was identified in this current year's budget for Wha Ti. From what I am aware, there is work underway. The majority of the money will be expended this year. There may be the need for a small carryover to next year, which will be done at year end by way of special warrant once the amount is clear. They are installing a new double berm oil tank with assorted piping for about $80,000; they are doing some metal roofing, replacement needs, worth about $20,000; some light fixtures, about $30,000; and they are investigating the wood pile... Sorry, they are investigating the wood pile situation to see what state they are in. That's going to be about $10,000 and they are doing a ventilation upgrade for the total building. So the intent is to get this work done. The majority of the work, I have been informed, will be completed and as I indicated, if there is a need to carry over money, that will be done through the standard process of special warrant.

If I could just speak briefly to the issue of capital, there is clearly a need to have a balance, as I indicated previously, between maintaining the facilities we have and trying to work to build new facilities where they are needed. Both Hay River and Fort Smith, which are in the capital plan, have technical assessments going back a number of years that indicate that they are talking about building envelope failure. We are not just talking shiny new hallways. We are talking heating systems, roof replacements because they are leaking. I have toured both the facilities. Hay River has some problems with ground moving on one side of the building close to a ravine. In Fort Smith, it was done in 1998. We have those technical assessments available if the committee would like them. I would also like to extend the offer to committee, if they want, we can go down and take a look at those facilities. I would also like to point out, Mr. Chairman, that we, on an ongoing basis, seek to improve and maintain the facilities we have. In the last three years, we have put $4 million into the Fort Simpson wellness centre, some money into Fort Liard, some money into the alcohol and drug treatment centre. We've renovated some work in the Tulita health centre, the Deline health centre. We've done a major renovation, a half life renovation in Holman. We've done some work in Tsiigehtchic. We've just opened a new Aklavik health centre. The Inuvik hospital, worth $49 million, will be open this summer. We are doing a major renovation in Sachs Harbour. There's been about half a million in Fort Resolution, some work at Stanton. Also, in Fort Smith and Hay River, we have been doing emergency repairs trying to maintain the buildings until we get to the major renovations that have been planned for.

So, Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the Member's concern that he would like to see a health centre, nursing station, in Wekweti. We are putting the money we have to what we think is the best possible use. We are also doing our best on the program side. We are going to add doctors. We are adding long-term care people. We are trying to do improvements with the alcohol and drug workers at the community level. So could we do more if we had more money? Without a doubt, Mr. Chairman. We are going to put the toll-free line in the business plan for next year. We agree as well that it's a good idea. Unfortunately, it came in greater than the budget we had allocated. As well, we would like to try to identify some of our information technology money to see if we can supplement the telehealth money because once again we agree that it's a good development, a good technology that can assist in areas outlined by my colleague, Mr. Lafferty. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The Chair will recognize Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I, too, would like to speak on the issue of the Family Law Act with regard to the effects we are seeing in our communities, especially my constituency. This is a major problem in the communities of Aklavik and Fort McPherson. What we are seeing is that it's becoming pretty apparent that this is becoming not just a problem, but an epidemic with regard to the numbers of children who are now presently in care and also being put through the court system where the whole court party has to put aside two days just to deal with family apprehension issues in the courts. It tells you it is now taking up court time. In Fort McPherson, they have to put aside two days in this month to deal with the children in care. I met with the social services people in the region and when you hear that 11 children are being considered to go into permanent custody, that tells me that we are now in the process of doing less than what was done in the past, which was children were taken away from their parents at an age of five and they never saw their parents again until maybe they are lucky to be home when they are 10 years old. By the time they got home, they didn't know who their parents were. They didn't know who their grandparents were. I don't think we intended to reinvent history here by duplicating what was done in the past. For me, it's a total catastrophe waiting to happen. You see major cases regarding things like Grollier Hall, the hostel systems and what we have seen across the country because of how governments have treated aboriginal people, especially aboriginal children. I think it's offensive that this government is now duplicating past history. I think as a Minister, knowing this problem is out there and not really doing anything to deal with the problem, makes me wonder if we are really carrying out the regulations and legislation we put forward.

In the legislation, as it was presented, the first option that was supposed to be considered under legislation was establishment of plan and care committees in communities. From my understanding, there are no plan and care committees anywhere. Yet, looking at the correspondence that was given to us when this legislation was going to come forward, that was the number one option on the list to be considered. As a government, we cannot fund a system where the social worker is doing the apprehension, the social worker is doing the plan and care work, the social worker is developing the legal argument to take to court. The social worker is the one who is going to be presenting the case in court. That was not the intention of this legislation, to have our frontline workers being set up to do all the dirty work, knowing that they will have to live in those communities. Those decisions that they make will fall back on them because of the decisions that are made either by a judge or by a court. It is causing chaos in our communities. These people are under a lot of pressure because of carrying out legislation that was intended to protect the child, but also ensuring that it is not used or abused where we have this number of children in the process.

We have to have the mechanisms in place. You can't establish a plan and care order for someone and say you have to take alcohol and drug treatment. You have to take treatment because of violence. You have to take treatment because of your problem of co-existing with other people. Then you find out, sorry, there are no treatment programs. I believe there is one program being delivered in Hay River with 30 beds, but you might be lucky to get in in two years. If we can't implement decisions or plan and care orders that we cannot carry out as a government, we shouldn't be imposing plan and care orders on parents knowing we do not have the capacity for those parents to take those programs. Yet, that is what is in the plan and care orders.

Then your other option is to go to court. When you take that option, you find out that the courts are booked, so the 45 days, which is the amount of time these children can be apprehended, passes until the next court party or court date can be put on the docket. Then you have to designate two days for the court party to deal with this plan and care order which goes to court. I think there is something wrong with that system when we have this many children in the system and we find out that 11 of them may become permanent custody cases by way of court order. That would put them into that cycle of being bounced from one home to another home, to one home to where we end up finding out that these kids are going to be in the young offenders' facilities, in our jail facilities, in our federal jail systems. That's how it starts out. We have great intentions, but once the children get into that system of being institutionalized, they become born into a lifestyle where they will be going in and out of institutions. We've seen it. It seemed to me that we are not learning anything from this legislation.

I have met with the Minister on this. We met last week or a week-and-a-half ago with members of the community of Fort McPherson. We have raised this issue about the idea of the establishment of plan and care committees and communities willing to look at that. Now all they do is the chief gets a phone call and he's told what can you do. By the time he is called into it, it's too late or already going to court. When it gets to court, you are not even allowed to be in the courtroom. That's the type of situation we are running into by way of legislation, and how it's been carried out and how it's having a direct effect on the cost of not only the delivery of the program but also the time and resources that are being put into this by frontline workers. I think it's burdened the system so they don't even have time to deal with other matters such as the elders' issues, pensions or the overall problem of people with disabilities. It's had a major affect on our progress. I would like to ask the Minister to respond to that. It's something I feel strongly about and has to be seriously looked at.

The other area I wanted to touch on is the area of the mental health workers and alcohol and drug workers in our communities. My concern is that it's not really clear of how we are going to reprofile these so-called community-based frontline workers. In most communities, we have an alcohol and drug program that's administered by the community. We may have a mental health worker in the community and I am getting the calls from those workers saying what is the status. Am I going to have to go back to school or what kind of qualifications do I have? Do I have to have a degree in becoming a mental health worker? Do I have to go back to school for two or three years to become an alcohol and drug worker? Those types of questions are out there and as a community, we also would like to know what is this going to do to the services that are presently being provided in our communities and are these positions going to stay in our communities or are they going to go to the regional centres like we've seen with most other positions? Could the Minister elaborate more on that and give us some assurances about the status of this whole process to reprofile or redefine these positions? Those people are frontline workers, along with the social workers, who deal with the problems day in and day out. Yes, they are overworked and underpaid. I believe they should get a major increase, but I don't want to see us losing these positions from our communities. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Once again, I will answer the last question first. We've worked with the Social Programs committee to do a briefing tomorrow at lunch time on the issue of the integrated service delivery model, but speaking mainly to the issue of reclassifying alcohol and drug workers into prevention workers and what is happening in the area of mental health and the clinical supervisors. However, I can tell my colleague what I told this House yesterday, there is no intention to lay people off. We are going to work with the incumbents to give them the skills necessary to do the job. We are going to have the positions reclassified, so there is a basic pay range and some benefits finally that have not been there all these years. There is no intent to take positions out of communities and move them to regional centres.

Speaking to the question and issues around the whole area of child welfare, I agree that there is almost an epidemic when it comes to the need to apprehend children. It's a serious situation. We've put in 20 new social workers over the last two years in addition to the staff we've had. Over the years, we've removed from social workers the burden of doing what we used to call welfare, which they used to say consumed a significant majority of their time. That was removed from them. We've also removed from social workers the issue of doing probation and parole, which is another corrections-related function which limited their ability to do social work. So we've done that, plus we've added social workers. Plus we've tried to add community health reps. We've tried to beef up the alcohol and drug programs. Yet, the need to apprehend children is still there. So we've also taken great pains to try to redo our legislation. In the 13th Assembly, we concluded a 10-year process to redo the child welfare legislation to build in the checks and balances, so that we would involve communities and families and have plan and care communities and avoid and learn from the mistakes of the past. However, the sad reality is that children still suffer neglect, that there are still situations that require social workers and child protection workers to step in and take children into care either briefly or for longer periods because of problems in the communities.

The Member is right, we have not acted on one piece of the legislation. We do have plan and care communities, but what we don't have is the child and family services committee that is supposed to provide a community oversight on child welfare issues, whereas the plan and care committees speak specifically to the issues of individual child welfare matters. As the Member indicated, we have committed to try to work with the community to set up that particular piece that's missing in legislation. We have been remiss in not doing this in other areas. It has probably affected our ability to have as much involvement of communities and handling child welfare matters as possible because that committee was to provide the community oversight and input into what's happening with child welfare matters in the community. The plan and care committees had a much narrower focus. So I accept that we have not met the mark there.

One of the fundamental issues is while we try to do a better job with the children we have to take into care, we have to somehow deal with stemming the need to apprehend children, to work with communities and families to avoid having that situation occur in the first place, which is once again why we are trying to rework our alcohol and drug and mental health services at the community level and bring in an integrated service delivery model to allow the service providers to work more effectively together in a coordinated way. It is not a perfect system, but a lot of the staff at the community level are community people who have been trained and are working in very difficult circumstances. So I thank the Member for his comments and look forward to continuing to work with him and his communities as we try to deal specifically with the issues, in his case, with the communities in his constituency. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Mr. Delorey.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I wasn't going to say too much more on this during general comments, but I would like to touch on some of the comments that the Minister made yesterday and bring a few more points forward and get some clarification.

Mr. Chairman, for probably the last two years or more, I have continually advocated in this House for the proper recognition by the Department of Health and Social Services of alcohol and drug workers in our communities. These people are extremely passionate about the work that they do on a daily basis to help eradicate addictions throughout the North. The least we could do as legislators is ensure they get the certification and recognition that they rightfully deserve. The chairperson of the North of 60 chapter of Canadian Addictions Counsellors Certification Board made a presentation to the Standing Committee on Social Programs almost a year ago now. She truly felt that there was a commitment from our government and particularly from the Department of Health and Social Services that the issue of recognition of additions was going to get the attention that it so rightfully deserved. Now it appears the department has shifted its focus entirely.

While reading the NWT Health and Social Services integrated service model, I noted that on page 11 it states, "Mental health workers with broader counselling and referral skills and higher certification can be utilized in place of addictions counsellors." I was completely appalled when I read this. It appears that this government has chosen to drop the ball on this one.

Yesterday in Committee of the Whole, the Minister of Health and Social Services stated: "With regard to the alcohol and drug workers, I would like to reassure my colleagues that the intention is not to replace alcohol and drug workers with mental health workers. The intention is to convert alcohol and drug workers with a different focus. They would be called prevention workers." I would like the Minister to expand a little bit on this and clarify as it appears that it flies directly in the face of the department's integrated service model. Could the Minister expand and clarify those issues? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Minister of Health and Social Services.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I can indicate to the Member and I can attempt to restate what I said yesterday, but the intention is not to replace alcohol and drug workers with mental health workers. What we are doing is adding where we can, with the money we have, some mental health workers where they didn't previously exist. We are also recognizing I would suggest at long last, in a very fundamental real way, the importance of alcohol and drug workers by finally giving them a job description and a pay level and some benefits that will allow them to exist as they do the job that they are so passionately committed to. We are going to work with the alcohol and drug workers on an individual basis as we move to the broader role of prevention workers. We are also trying to add some mental health workers to the mix to work with social workers, nurses, doctors and community health reps and family violence people and all the other services that may be available to individual communities, so that we have as broad a range of services working together to deal on a prevention basis with the issues at the community level. Thank you.

Mr. Delorey.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, also yesterday the Minister stated that in the budget, there was funding to give alcohol and drug workers, soon to be called prevention workers, an increase in pay with some benefits and to deliver a curriculum of training and certification for workers. Would the Minister elaborate on this, that they are going to set up curriculum for training and certification? What exactly does that mean and what is the certification going to be? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Minister of Health and Social Services, Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I can give the Member a frame of where we are going with the certification for prevention workers and the training. The final detailed curriculum has yet to be completed, but in the days of old going back prior to 1995, there was an alcohol and drug course that was offered over at the college that was moved to the reserve and over time just faded from the radar in terms of requirement for alcohol and drug workers. So the intent is to work with Aurora College as the vehicle to develop a curriculum that can tie in hopefully and probably with the social work courses that are currently being delivered and that could be part of that area of study or on their own could become a certificate course. That's the thought at this point in terms of how we would like to proceed. Thank you.

Mr. Delorey.

It's good to say we are going to set up a curriculum and give more training and that at one time, the college had a training program for alcohol and drug workers or addictions workers and it was moved to the reserve and it has disappeared off the radar screen. But have we addressed it wasn't a successful program or why it has disappeared off the radar screen? With a new curriculum and new training under a different name, prevention workers, what is that going to give anybody that is working in the field? Whether you call it mental health, addictions or whatever you want to call it, what is it going to give somebody as far as mobility rights? If you work for 20 years as a prevention worker and you move to Alberta, what does that give you? Is this going to be a nationally recognized certification program or what is it going to be? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Minister of Health and Social Services.