My number one issue in health care, Health and Social Services, continues to be seniors’ care. I think seniors tend to be viewed by all the people in the community almost as the unofficial leaders of the community, and one of the things that really have bothered my community of Fort Resolution. I think for the most part the people in Lutselk’e have been able to keep their seniors at home in their last days. But they, too, have had no options in their community once a senior hits a certain level of health and has to be taken outside the community. If there are some seniors that require more than just basic care -- they could get a little basic care from home care people -- then they pretty well have to be removed from the community.
We have situations like that that are not comfortable for the families. It’s difficult for the senior and very difficult if the senior that is taken out of the community for better care into Yellowknife, Hay River, Fort Smith or whatnot has a spouse that is still able to care for themselves and they’re left behind. It’s a real issue.
I think that the community of Fort Resolution has asked the department to try to come up with some sort of a plan. I don’t think it’s a plan that would indicate they would be taking care of people that have dementia or people that have care to do everything, but individuals in the community that still have some ability to care for themselves with assistance and then providing that type of care. I recognize that there is a cost to that, but at the same time there’s a lot of value to the people and in
my riding to have these seniors remain with the family as long as possible.
I’m still looking for a plan from Health and Social Services to address that issue. I’m looking, like I said, in the community forward to having something done. We’ve had discussions on it and at some point I think we’re not really connecting, because what the community wants and what I’m asking for is less than what the full care that individual needs in their last days that can only be provided by certain professionals is what the department feels the community is looking for, but that may not really be the case. In a lot of cases where one of the local people in Lutselk’e indicated to me that I guess the best term he could come up with individuals that used to take care of the elderly in their dying days in their own homes were Dene nurses. He said you should use that term because that’s a term that they used. They never really used that term, but in the aboriginal language they basically referred to them as that, and these people took care of a lot of people back in the day when transportation wasn’t easy and individuals passed away in their homes.
I think that the department should pay a lot of attention to addictions and the prevention of addictions. The addiction prevention and aftercare seem to have much greater value for money than treatment. So I’m looking forward to some of the stuff in the plan for the prevention of the various addictions and what type of aftercare and what type of support the local workers in the communities would have. Sometimes they’re not in the best location for this type of work and so on, but at the same time I recognize that sometimes there’s a long-term commitment for these individuals who are located in the community. It’s a problem for some community members as far as accessing addictions and mental health counselling and so on. Along that line, I think that communities should have some sort of therapeutic aid or something along those lines that I think I may have mentioned previously. Something where individual therapists would come into a community and they see clients in the community, around the community, around the schools and so on. But we really don’t have anybody to assist them, anybody to coordinate their activities, to keep track of what’s happening when they’re not in and out of there on short spurts. That’s something that at least the community of Fort Resolution and also Lutselk’e would benefit from something like that, if the department went and got some sort of aid for these professionals and therapists that come into the community and see people along the way. There’s no real coordinated approach.
I think the department should look at the Child Protection Act. I don’t really know a whole lot about this act at all. In fact, I don’t think I’ve even read the
act. However, I have seen results of what the act unapplied can do. I have a couple of really serious situations, serious cases in Tu Nedhe where individuals who were taken from their communities at a very young age and today these adults are suffering the consequences of actions taken under that act that was designed to protect them and has completely destroyed their lives. If the act is there to protect someone yet at the end of the day completely destroys their life, there must be something wrong. Maybe it’s the application or maybe it’s where the act comes from, how it’s written, and how people have different needs in the community as far as child protection goes, and different views and so on. That’s just an area I think the department should look at.
Board reform. I, along with the Member for Kam Lake, sit on the board reform with Cabinet and we’ve looked at that. Because of our positions in there we’ve had a lot of opportunity to speak to a lot of different boards and so on. It’s not something that is favourable as it is planned out at this point, but there may be some board reform necessary. I think the one thing that definitely has to happen that cannot happen is the amalgamation of the three departments. I think it should be board reform for health, for housing, and for education in three different streams and leave it that way. That would be something that would be more acceptable.
I, too, will put in a plug for the Milk Subsidy Program. I think that’s something that will benefit the small communities where milk is very expensive. In fact, I heard a person from Lutselk’e talking about that and the Healthy Food Program, that they had on this morning on CBC.