Thank you, Mr. Chair. I, too, would like to take this opportunity to thank Dr. De Clerc and the nurses who have made an effort to stay in the communities, regardless of the conditions they’re working under. They’re short-staffed, they’re short of doctors, but they still make attempts to do their best.

As an organization we’re talking about health care, but there are different types of health care in the Northwest Territories. You have urban health care, in which you have clinics, you have walk-in clinics, you have a major hospital — you can, basically, have lots of NGO support. In the communities in the rural parts of the Territories it is a service that, in some cases, is not even existent. In Tsiigehtchic we don’t have nursing. The basic programs and services are not to be had.

It’s the same thing with mental health and dealing with alcohol and drug programming. We’ve revamped that program to try to make it more accessible throughout the Northwest Territories, but we’ve made it so stringent we cannot find the people to fill those positions in those communities.

A lot of those positions could be provided to deal with alcohol, drugs and mental health issues in those communities. In Fort McPherson some 27 years ago, Mr. Neil Colin and his wife started the alcohol and drug centre on their own, because they felt that someone had to take on that responsibility and let people know there were problems with alcohol in that community. I think people like that have broken the trail to realize that as communities, you can take on more of these responsibilities by just doing something.

As someone who has represented the Mackenzie Delta region for years — ever since I’ve been here, since the 13th Assembly — I don’t think I’ve talked

more about this since the 13th Assembly, until the

Minister was blue in the face.

But yet again, it’s an over-$2-million facility being built. They just built another facility, just outside of Inuvik, for almost $4 million, to help people deal with ailments that could be dealt with at the local level. You don’t have to send people to Yellowknife or Edmonton, or apprehend children and send them away. There’s an opportunity to work with the families, work with the children, in the local region or local community, and find workable programs that meet the needs of the people.

In the North we sometimes have great ideas, but some of these programs and services don’t fit all. We have to have a system in place so you can basically restructure, reformat a program so it meets the need that is unique to that community or that group of people. As a government we talk about community empowerment. I know in the 13th Assembly, that was the big catchword of the day. I believe people had the flexibility, through block-funding agreements, to basically deliver that program as they saw fit by developing a program for themselves.

As a government we talk about the cost of health care. A lot of these issues around health care are preventable. A lot of them originate from alcohol and drugs, substance abuse, health issues related to poor eating habits — things that can be prevented. If we put the focus in that area and — realizing that this is millions of dollars we’re spending in this area — if we just give the tools and the ability to community members by way of healthy living initiatives and whatnot, and also deal with mental health, alcohol and drug issues locally, a lot of these medevac costs, the costs associated with mental health care, can be greatly reduced.

An issue I’ve touched on before is child care, and also wellness of families — wellness of children, wellness of elders and whatnot — in our communities. Communities do take these issues seriously. They’re trying to do what they can; they try to do what’s best. A lot of the time they have a better working relationship with the federal Department of Health than they do with our own Health and Social Services in this government. They receive funds from federal national organizations through Health Canada, through aboriginal funding initiatives in regard to Brighter Futures. I think that trying to work with our government, our regional operations, is frustrating. Little things that could be worked out, and should be worked out, are made so difficult that a simple drive down the road — for two hours, in some cases — is a burden to people in the Inuvik office.

I had an issue around the mental health position in Fort McPherson. I fought for years for that program. It was administered out of Fort McPherson since

1991 with its own internal programs and services. But just in the last couple of months we lost that position, as the person’s moved on. There was very little support from the government for that particular person. If anything, they basically forced the community to finally say, “Enough is enough; let’s hand it back to the government.” Now that responsibility’s being delivered out of Inuvik. For a community with a population of about 1,000 people, we have to depend on mental health services out of Inuvik, which I think is chaotic. We’re going backwards instead of going ahead. We’re talking about self-government; we’re talking about the whole idea of empowering communities.

The other area, again, is that we have these camps in the Inuvik region. We just had a new camp that opened up just outside of Inuvik; they had the Tl’oondih Healing Centre outside of Fort McPherson; they’re working on the Knut Lang camp just outside of Aklavik. The whole intention behind the investments made by these organizations is to find a way to deal with community issues, community problems, outside of the community.

We, as government, have to start working with these organizations, like NGOs here in Yellowknife, in regard to the different organizations that are working hard to deal with their support mechanisms here in Yellowknife. I think that we have to do everything we can to support those organizations.

Again, Mr. Chairman, this government has to come up with a plan to work with these groups and organizations, use the infrastructure that’s there, use the…. Instead of building new infrastructure and whatnot, use what facilities are available.

There has been a bit of talk about the Inuit benefit insurance stuff, which is basically dealing with the federal government. People can’t lose sight of the fact that these programs are underfunded by the federal government. A lot of aboriginal people have been complaining about that for years. We can’t lose sight that yes, it is a federal responsibility, but you have to realize that aboriginal health here in the Northwest Territories is, in some cases, not as high as for the rest of the residents in the Northwest Territories. We have to realize that their needs are probably higher than other people’s and, more importantly, that the money they get from Ottawa, or we get from Ottawa, is not enough. We have to fight that battle with Ottawa and not among ourselves.

In closing, I did touch again on the issue of apprehensions and the amount of money we’re spending in that area. I feel quite strongly that as a government we cannot go back and have the residential school scenario dropped on us again. These children, once they’re taken away from their families and put into a cycle of institutional reform

— in which, basically, they go from one foster care to another foster care to another foster care — become institutionalized into the young offenders system and eventually end up in our court system.

I asked the Minister the other day: what do you do with a child who’s a ward of the state, basically in permanent care of this government, when they turn 18 years old and find themselves in jail? I think the response was, “Well, we’re not responsible for those children after they turn 18.” The problem is that these kids were under your care all through their teenaged life. As soon as they get into trouble and end up in our corrections system, we wash our hands of them. I feel it’s unjust to that person who was taken away from their family, put into that scenario from one foster care home to another and ended up in a corrections facility. To me, that’s exactly what we saw with the residential school scenario.

With that, Mr. Chair, I will be asking the Minister questions in these different areas as we come to them.