Page 8-32, activity summary, community health programs, grants and contributions, contributions, continued on to page 8-33, grants and contributions for $60.195 million. Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. In regard to child services, in regard to foster care, I would like to ask the Minister, can you tell me exactly how many children are in care in regard to the foster care in the Northwest Territories and do you have a breakdown by regions or ridings?

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Minister Lee.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The numbers we have are that we have 622 children in care in various methods, many of them are in their own families. I believe the Mackenzie Delta has 31 children in care. Some of these children have been in care for a very long time. So we have 38 children for Inuvik riding; 61 children under Hay River constituency; 31 children under Mackenzie Delta constituency; 47 children under Nahendeh; 57 children under Monfwi; 40 children in Nunakput; 27 children in Sahtu; 42 children from Thebacha; 10 children from Tu Nedhe; 237 children from Yellowknife; and 32 from Deh Cho. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister Lee. Perhaps you could provide the raw data to committee. Anything further, Mr. Krutko?

Does the Minister also have a cost breakdown of the cost of each of these children in each of the ridings?

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Back to you, Mr. Krutko.

Can the Minister give us a breakdown by way of cost for these children to be in care in the different ridings, breaking down the $7.6 million item? Mr. Chairman, just to save time, can the Minister just maybe give us a paper copy of that instead of reading them out, if she has it at her disposal. I think that will make it move through a little faster.

It will take some work to do cost on the children in care because they’re in all sorts of different situations. I should just note, Mr. Chairman, that the vast majority, about two-thirds of these children are in some sort of very temporary situations. Many of them are in their families, about 250 are in their own homes, about 217 are in permanent custody, and the other third is halfway in between different stages. I will undertake to provide the Members with the cost involved. Thank you.

Mr. Chair, does the Minister also have a breakdown on the number of children in southern facilities outside the Northwest Territories and the cost of that?

That will be part of the information that we will provide the Members. There are currently 34 children in southern treatment centres. Thank you.

Mr. Chair, I’d like to ask the Minister, are there any plans to review the Family and Child Services Act to see exactly why is it that there are so many children in care and how many children have been apprehended since the legislation came into force. More importantly, why is it that there are so many children in care? From 622 for a jurisdiction of 40,000 people, that’s quite a high percentage. I think that as a Territory we should be appalled at the number of kids who are in care and especially at this number and we’re spending almost $8 million on something that, if anything, there should be more focus on reuniting these children than having them in care. I’d like to ask the Minister, are there any plans to do a review of the Child and Family Services Act in regard to the number of children in care?

Mr. Chairman, I appreciate that this is large number and one that we would want to see getting lower, but I do want to advise the Member that the number has been decreasing over the last three years. Out of 622 children, over half of them are with their own families or with extended families or within their communities.

Mr. Chairman, I do want to also say that...I’m not sure how many years it’s been; I think it’s been about five years since that last report was done and there were some changes made to legislation. It would be worthwhile for us to look at where we are going and if we could relook at how we do child

protection work in terms of reviewing to see if we could do better, with a view to focusing on providing support to families so as to prevent child protection incidents. Thank you.

Mr. Chair, I was here during the 14th Assembly when this legislation was brought

forward and one of the key selling points of the legislation back then was the whole area that there was going to be plan of care committees established in every community so that when a child was apprehended, there was going to be a plan of care committee so that they could sit down with the social worker, the parents of the child, and try to figure out how they’re going to do either a plan of care order, work out how they’re going to try to work out their differences to reunite the child back into its original family. I’d like to ask the Minister where we are in regard to these plan of care committees and what are we doing to enhance those committees in the communities of the Northwest Territories. I’d like to know how many of these committees are in place and active.

I appreciate that the legislation provides for plan of care. The department has had workshops, briefings and meetings in communities to encourage communities to establish these committees. But I think even then we’re talking...Plan of care speaks to dealing with after the situation that would arise and children coming into child protection issues. I think what we need to do and what I’d like to do as a Minister is to see if we could support the families and perhaps children that face risk and help them so that they don’t have to come into these situations. There are programs available. We have them in Yellowknife, Hay River, Simpson and I understand there’s one starting in Inuvik. I think that’s where we need to go. I understand that, with this program, we meet with families who are expecting children who are at risk and to support the families so that there is less chance of them going into a child protection situation. I am interested in seeing if we can strengthen that program. I would look forward to working with the Members in that regard. Thank you.

A final question. As we all know, the residential school phenomena is all over the place now and I think that, personally, someone who has seen the impact of what that has done to our communities, especially our elders and our grandparents. What they did back then is nothing less than what we’re doing today under the family and child services legislation. All we’re doing is legalizing apprehending children from First Nations families. I think that with the predominant number of 600, I believe the majority of those children are aboriginal children. I personally have a real problem when I know of individual families who are trying their hardest to basically take alcohol and drug

treatment programs, going to different courses, doing whatever they can, but they make the rules so rigid that they can’t even do anything without a social worker looking down their throats. For me, I think that this does have to be reviewed.

This legislation is not balanced. It basically favours one side over the other. There is no real legal ability for a family member to get legal counsel in a lot of our communities, to understand what their rights are as parents or to understand on what terms those children were apprehended without having the ability to defend themselves. I find that very disheartening. I would just like to point out to the Minister that this is nothing more than what happened to children in residential schools.

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. I didn’t hear a question there, so I’m going to go to our next Member. Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just wanted to follow up a bit on the plan of care committees mentioned by Mr. Krutko. I gather that not many plan of care committees actually exist. I would like to ask the Minister whether or not there is any funding provided in the budget to establish and keep up these plan of care committees.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Minister Lee.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There was never any funding made available to set up the plan of care committees; the department has been using internal resources. Part of the work that the staff under social services programming has undertaken is to meet with the communities where they ask, although I have asked them to be proactive and they have done that. They have had a number of workshops in communities. So I think that it would be worthwhile to see if we could work on some budgeting item to see how we could support the communities to set up these committees. Thank you.

Thanks for the answer; that is great. I think it would be valuable time and effort to look at designating some funding for this particular portion of the act, and I do appreciate the Minister’s comment about using other programs to try and head off kids before they do get apprehended and put into foster care. Prevention is a far better way to go. But if they do have to be placed, then funding for plan of care committees, if that is going to make it easier for them to get established, then I think that is a good initiative to look at.

I did have another question, as well, with regard to there are a couple of addictions initiatives, aftercare for addictions, a couple of initiatives in the budget. When we reviewed the business plans, the Minister

indicated that there was no implementation date at that time. It is a couple of months later. I wonder if she could advise when these particular initiatives might be in force in this next budget year. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, I think I spoke about this in the opening statements, that wherever possible, we want to fund programs that would encourage and facilitate community groups to be able to do aftercare and some of the healing programs. Gwich’in Wellness Camp, for example, is interested in accessing that money and we will look to see, it is not a lot of money -- $450,000 allocated -- and we will try to flexible in that regard. Thank you.

I guess, just to clarify then, the funds are available as of April 1st and on an

application basis. Is that correct? Thank you.

By application, but also all of the health and social services authorities are aware of this programming and they will be looking to see what potentials there are in their regions. Thank you.