Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We would like to continue considering the NWT Main Estimates, 2011-2012. We would like to start off with the Department of Health and Social Services and then go to Justice and the Legislative Assembly; following that, the supplementary appropriations. That would be TD 156 and 157.

Is committee agreed?

With that, we’ll take a short break.

---SHORT RECESS

I’d like to call the committee back to order. Prior to the break we agreed to continue on with Department of Health and Social Services and the Department of Justice and the Legislative Assembly. With that, at this time I’d like to ask the Minister if she would be bringing in witnesses. Ms. Lee.

Yes, please, Mr. Chairman.

Is committee agreed the Minister can bring in her witnesses?

Sergeant-at-Arms, escort the witnesses in.

For the record, Ms. Lee, could you introduce your witnesses?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have with me to my right Deputy Minister Paddy Meade. Further right is Mr. Derek Elkin, director of finance. To my left is Mr. Dana Heide, assistant deputy minister of operations.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Welcome, witnesses. We’re on page 8-7. Mr. Abernethy.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I seek unanimous consent to go back to page 8-29.

The Member is seeking unanimous consent to return to page 8-29. Is committee agreed?

Mr. Abernethy.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Earlier when we were considering this department we had a number of questions that we had asked. I’d like to just follow up on some of those questions.

One of the questions we were asking relates to the Minister’s response to the Child and Family Services review and was about publication information. We had asked for some plain language information, how-to resources, things on the website, pamphlets and whatnot to be done up and it was consistent with one of the recommendations we had in the act. I was wondering if the Minister could tell us if they are going to move on that. Whether we can expect to see some of those plain language how-to guides and resources for print and distribution to people throughout the Northwest Territories done during the 2011-2012 fiscal year.

Ms. Lee.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I responded to the chair of Standing Committee on Social Programs on that issue on February 25

th

and

indicated that we will implement that.

So we’re happy to see that commitment. We’re happy that’s going to get done.

The second one we talked about previously was the policy and standards manual. When we were out talking to the people, including staff, it was made clear that a lot of work needed to be done to the policy and standards manuals to make them a little bit more clear, a little bit more plain language, make it easier for the employees to understand, but also clarity for, once again, residents of the Northwest Territories. We were at that time seeking a commitment from the Minister to include these revisions in the 2011-2012 main estimates for completion or at least noticeable completion or progress during the 2011-12 fiscal year. I was wondering if the Premier can let us know the status of that request.

That item also was requested by the Member in the standing committee and I responded to the standing committee on the same day, February 25

th

, that we will implement that

within the upcoming 2011-12 fiscal year using our own resources. That would also include consulting with child protection workers and managers. Thank you.

I’d like to thank the Minister for the commitment to get that done. Once again, I think that’s incredibly important for our users and for the administration of the Child and Family Services Act overall.

Another area that we talked about was obviously a critical area to us, and it’s one of the aspects that made the Child and Family Services Act unique in all of Canada, and that was the establishment of child and family services committees. Currently, there is one child and family service committee in

the Northwest Territories and that’s in Fort McPherson. Yet the act does say that we will have a child and family service committee in all the communities throughout the Northwest Territories. We had asked during our previous discussion that the Minister commit to five. There was some discussion during business planning, I believe it was in the business plans, that the department would work towards having five committees established in the 2011-12 fiscal year, but we didn’t see any budget line for it, and I still don’t see a budget line for it in the main estimates. I’m wondering what is the status of the commitment for five in 2011-12 as outlined in the business plans. Thank you.

Our commitment is to bring that forward into the next business plan process. Thank you.

That’s not consistent with what we heard during the business planning process this time. We were under the impression that the department was going to work towards the implementation of five. With one already in place, that means four more. Meaningful work towards implementing four more for a total of five during the 2011-12 fiscal year. I’m curious why that’s gone, why that’s no longer a commitment of the Minister as outlined in the business plans.

It is consistent with the way the main estimate is presented. There is no money allocated for the children and family services committees. Our response to the recommendation from the committee was that we do appreciate the need for that. We would like to proceed with that but in order to do a proper job of it, we need to get the funding for that. We believe one of the main reasons these committees have not been successful in being established, even though, as the Member states, that these were provided for within the legislation, is because it’s not properly resourced. To be able to do that we believe that it should be presented as a part of the business plan process and properly resourced. For that reason we are making a commitment again that we will present it as a business plan initiative for the next fiscal year, 2012-13, which process would begin almost immediately after the main estimate is approved and finished. Thank you.

Mr. Chair, I remain confused. Once again, during the business planning process we understood that the department was committing to making substantial progress towards having five child and family service committees in the Northwest Territories. We didn’t see the budget line in the 2011-12 main estimates, which is why, frankly, we were confused. We fully expected to see that. As I’ve said, it’s an incredibly integral part of the Child and Family Services Act and its implementation. We’re talking about empowering

communities and giving them the ability to help themselves when it comes to child apprehensions. We’re talking about implementing committees which could significantly save us money and improve results for our children, those children that are in jeopardy within the communities.

Frankly, I need to understand how it went from being yes, in the business plans we’re committed, to the main estimates, no evidence of it at all, to now, oh, we’re going to do it in 2012-13. How can the Minister commit the next government? I mean, often I hear we can’t commit the next government to this, that or the other. I’m not confident that by saying today, oh, we’ll do it in 2012-13 means that it’s going to get done. We’d like to see something done now. We would like to see a commitment to move on the child and family services committees as the Minister said she would during the business planning process. Where is the consistency? I don’t understand what I’m being told, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Chair, the Member can be as confused as he lets himself be, so I’m not sure if I can help him with that. The fact is, and when I say that we’re going to proceed, we’re going to present this as part of the next business plan, it doesn’t mean that I’m committing the next government. We are still going to be in this Assembly as we review the next business plan. The Member’s been here for three years. He knows what the process is. We’ve outlined in our reply to the committee a number of competing priorities that the Members have presented to us and the Member knows already that the business plan review process considers lots of initiatives that come forward from not only this department but from all other departments as well. I have made it clear that my department will present this and the other item that the committee has presented as a priority item.

There’s nothing to be confused about the fact that this was mentioned in the business plan which we reviewed in September and the main estimates that are before us. It does happen between the business plan and the main estimates. We have presented detailed information about how much money it would cost for us to establish these in the communities and to properly resource them and to do it right. I really feel, Mr. Chair, that the department went a long way in meeting the demands of the committee. They asked for four things to incorporate into our existing budget. The budget is already stretched and we have offered to incorporate upwards of $600,000 from within to meet the demands of the committee and the Members. This is not just my budget, Mr. Chairman, it is our budget and the Member knows how the money flows. You can’t get blood from a stone unless we take it out of somewhere. I mean, it’s not responsible math just to say add something more on and not look at the whole picture. Thank you.

It’s easy to be confused when somebody tells you one thing and you believe it and you expect it to appear in the main estimates and then it doesn’t appear in the main estimates. We are all in support of that initiative to have five in the communities, we all expected to see it and I don’t see it. It’s easy to be confused, Mr. Chairman.

I also must point out to the Minister this is her third term and she knows how main estimates coming into an election work and business planning. It’s my understanding that as a Member of this 16

th

Assembly we’re not really going to have an opportunity as Regular Members to sit in front of the business plans for the 2012-13 fiscal year and discuss them. It just doesn’t happen. Once again, I’m confused why she thinks that’s the process that’s going to be in front of us, because we’re not going to have an opportunity to look at them. I remain concerned. I remain confused. It was explained to us that it was going to be done and now we’re hearing, no, we don’t have the money. We said yes, but we don’t have the money so we’ve changed our mind.

This is something the Minister committed to and I think the Minister should live up to that commitment. I’d like to understand how the Minister went from being supportive of this thing and all of us expecting it to happen to being off the agenda, off the radar, not happening. The Minister’s staff went to the communities. They heard clearly. I’m disappointed. I’m radically disappointed in this Minister’s rejection of these committees for the 2011-12 fiscal year.

Mr. Chairman, I don’t have anything to add to that. Thank you.

Next I have Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to ask what the Minister is planning to do to enhance prevention and early intervention aspects of child and family services as a result of our review and how this is reflected in the budget as presented here.

Minister Lee.

Mr. Chairman, prevention and early intervention, we do that in many of our program areas, but in specifically for healthy families, the Member knows that we are proposing to expand the programming to Inuvik and Fort Simpson. That is part of this main estimate. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, I do indeed know that. What we had asked the Minister was to do more in terms of prevention and early intervention. I am happy to see that the Minister is going to be recommending further expansion on healthy programs in 2012-13. That sounds like good work. These are expensive programs, although I have to

say I would like to debate any budgets provided to us on that, certainly not what we were told when we looked in the healthy families.

I would just like to say, Mr. Chairman, looking at our report, prevention programs are starved for resources and lack capacity to take on more clients. The unfortunate reality is that crisis cases eat up the lion’s share of child welfare resources. This crisis response mode is not sustainable. The Minister is right; this is our budget, we are together on this. We have done a lot of work on it and listened to the people. What we are hearing is much more is needed on the prevention side. We raised this. We are refusing to accept this budget until we get more in that area, which means the Minister, or we will have to make judgment decisions on where the money will come from and we are hoping the Minister will take that on. But we have tried to say this is clearly the responsibility. We need more on prevention and intervention services. Now there are a million ways that the Minister could provide to deliver prevention and early intervention services. We go on to suggest, Members heard how many parents, especially young parents, would benefit from counselling and support groups. We need to vastly improve pre and post-natal care and parenting skills, offer respite services and child care plus in-home supports and home visitation programs. Investing in these prevention programs early will reduce the demand for protection services in the near future. These are investments. That is how we see them.

I am asking the Minister again. I am informing the Minister that we need to see action for us to make progress here. We are waiting. I welcome any comments from the Minister.

Mr. Chairman, as the Member knows, there are a number of prevention programs that are being delivered within the health and social services system and the authorities. I do agree with the Member that prevention is important and that it has to be part of our work. I do agree with him that, like any other health and social services system across the country, our systems often respond to post event rather than pre-event. It is for that reason that we have worked to expand prevention and early intervention into additional communities in this budget. I do not have any more money than what I had before this Assembly in this main estimate.

The Child and Family Services Act review report did come out and we have accepted 63 out of 73 recommendations. There are some that we are saying we will need to get additional funding to be able to do that properly. We are making a commitment to the Member, that I will be putting forward as a new initiative or a continuing initiative, prevention and early intervention money for the next business plan cycle.

This budget is a government budget. This is the Cabinet budget that we are putting forward to the Members. That is the commitment I can make. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, that is not good enough, obviously, or we wouldn’t be here. We have stated in our report that there are, in fact, some prevention programs, but as I said, we found that the programs are starving for resources and lack capacity. The Minister agrees with us that prevention is a key part of the approach, but the Minister doesn’t realize that we are saying it needs to be a much larger part and that we will gain savings from that. That will contribute to our health delivery programs. It is the Minister’s responsibility now or ours to find those dollars.

Mr. Chairman, no. I have been asking the Minister where her priorities are able to shift. If not, the next step would be that we would sit down and determine that, I would imagine.

Mr. Chairman, the letter that I sent to the standing committee on February 25

th

is

the analysis we have done. It is the government’s position on this issue. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, just to confirm, the Minister sees no other work that the department can do in the area of prevention and early intervention other than a couple of healthy family programs for 2012-13. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, the Member knows that our budget, every cent and every dollar is allocated so I am not sure where he thinks that I could come up with $1.4 million to expand this program within this budget. I know that the Members have suggested that I look at $12 million under Child Protection Program but a lot of them are under contracts already. I would be happy to provide the Member with detailed information if he had an idea about where to move the money. I could tell you right now that even one of these two move it will have a consequence.

Mr. Speaker, I talked to the chair of the standing committee. I was under the understanding that the response I provided is something that is workable with the committee and the Members on that side. I am not aware of any other arrangements that the Member has. I think the Member has an obligation to look at the entire budget and not just go with what he thinks should be done. If he has something that he wants me to move, I would be happy to take it to Cabinet upon doing the analysis. These

budgets are not done by just one person. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, if I could ask for a detailed breakdown of the contract services, $12.724 million, that would be very useful. I would appreciate that this afternoon. Thank you.

Mr. Elkin.

Next I have Mr. Beaulieu.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have a very similar line of questioning as my colleagues, maybe just to clear something up that the Minister has brought open here in the House that felt that this would not be a problem with me. I had indicated that I was optimistic about this, but once we took a more detailed look at it, it was not something that I too am comfortable with. I see this as a fairly simple process, actually. I want to talk first about child and family services committees that our Standing Committee on Social Programs talked about. That was the establishment of five more communities that would go into the business plan for 2011-12. When we got together, the question was the cost. I don’t believe the cost of establishing these committees at the cost that was provided to us by the Minister. We are looking at this. It seems like we have done a whole bunch of work as a committee. We travelled around the communities and we got some recommendations that we thought were going to make a difference. There was obviously an issue with this whole system and the way the child and family services was being run. That is why there were so many kids in care and there are kids in the wrong cultural not in their home, basically not in their home communities, not in culturally that is foster homes. Many of them are good foster homes. I am not putting down the foster homes, but many of them are issues. We heard right across the Territories and all the small communities that didn’t like the idea of kids going into foster care and then being removed from the community and so on.

We provided options in recommendations in the report, one of them being child and family services committees. I thought the department would look at that, take a look at the five communities that had the highest apprehensions and then take that money instead of having the kids in foster care and develop committees, not balloon the costs for each

committee and then provide it back to us and say you can’t do anything with it. That is not something we had expected. We thought that these were good recommendations that came that we thought would improve things over the long run. If we are not going to do anything, then why didn’t we just learn that at the very beginning?

We have to make recommendations. We went through the review. We are making recommendations. If the department doesn’t want to do the key issues that we felt were going to resolve some of the longstanding issues with the total area of child protection, the whole child and family services, then we should have been told that right off the bat.

It is no use doing the review because we don’t have the money to do it. We know the health budgets were tight. These were recommendations where we felt that money could be moved into other areas that would be lessened by these actions, by creating committees in communities where there are the highest apprehensions that would be the cost of foster care would go down. Then we run these committees and now attempt this and then do the early intervention. That is the same thing. If we are going to add, and we didn’t ask to add the two more healthy family programs, we asked for early intervention and we asked for prevention. There could be all kinds of things involved in that. Now it’s a good idea to expand the Healthy Families. We thought that that was a good program. There are two more in expansion. I don’t recall us saying that we would go into Fort Resolution or Lutselk’e with the committee. If the department felt that this was feasible to go into the regional centres because the regional centres are the bigger communities and the bigger communities are where the higher birth rates are and the Healthy Families go from the time there is a pregnancy up until, I forget the age, but I think something around preschool and then they work with these families. We’re in communities where there are higher birthrates, then we’re probably hitting a majority of the communities and then the prevention in the long run again pays money down the road on having healthier families and you don’t have so many issues later on and these groups are actually working with the families. To me it seems like we should be looking at this area, that’s why we’ve gone back to 8-29. Look at that budget and figure out how we can do this. Then let’s take another look at the numbers. Has the department take another look at the numbers. These numbers here seem to be very high. Why would we need $125,000 to train a child protection worker in each community where we’re trying to set up a committee? Why?

Anyway, I’d like the Minister to respond to some of that.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Minister Lee.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to just remind the Member, who is standing committee chair, that I agree with him and I said that in my letter on February 25

th

that the

prevention, and I quote, “the prevention oriented recommendations of Standing Committee on Social Programs will, in the long-term, have a positive effect on these expenditures.” I agree with him. The standing committee review of the CFSA and those recommendations about prevention and increasing child and service committees and doing more of that work, I agree with him that that is a positive step and I’ve said that.

Now the issue here is that the committee is saying that you should expand this program now and you should do that by finding savings from within because prevention will save money. I think that ignores the staggering effect it has in prevention work and what’s already there, because we already have children in foster care and if you were to take this money out of that $12 million, the money that is allocated to kids in foster care and the families that are taking care of them, we have kids in Trailcross, we have kids in residential care, we have kids in care and we have to pay for them this year.

So if you’re going to take any of that out of there, I don’t have money to take out of there so that I can create the children and family services committees this year. That’s what I’m telling you. I agree with you; in the long run that is the right way to go. So children and family services committees, we have worked on this for the last 10 years because the legislation provides for that, but no Legislature has ever approved money for it. So coming forward in the next business plan, this will be the first time when we will actually go to business planning and ask for money, but we need to do it properly. To have children and family services committees to work, most people that want to sit on it would like to be paid to do that. They also want to be trained to see what the Child and Family Services Act says, in how do you intervene. If you want to bring elders and community people together to do this important work, then they need to be properly supported and trained just like community justice committees.

The reason why that succeeded, and I worked in Justice when that came up in the ‘90s, they were very well supported. They had a coordinator headquartered in Yellowknife, they had regional coordinators, there were staff, there were people like Nick Sibbeston who chose to work there. That was done properly.

So I’m saying you can’t say just because you want prevention now to take the money from people that are already in the hospital sick so that you can do prevention. I think that’s the right way to go and what I’m saying is the business plan said that we

will work on increasing five committees. We will continue to do that, but the letter that I had was that the committee report wanted us to get really aggressive and set up five committees this year. In order to do that I am submitting to you that if we don’t want to keep on failing, because lots of Members were here, we recommended that these committees be set up. Without putting resources in there and putting honorarium, putting program money in there, it ain’t going to work. I’m asking you to give me two or three months to put this into the business plan review. For you to say it should be easy for you to just move $1.5 million, I don’t know how anyone gets that. It’s not that I don’t want to do it.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Your time is up. I can put you back on the list if you want but I’m going to go to the next person on the list. Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Hard to know where to start here. I listened to the Minister answer Mr. Abernethy’s questions with regard to the business plan and what we thought was there and what apparently is not there anymore. The Minister just mentioned, and I am reading from page 42 of the Health and Social Services business plan, and it says work with communities to establish child and family service committees and at least five more communities in this business year. That’s from the business plan which Social Programs committee spent a great deal of time discussing, debating, getting information on in September of 2010. I have to ask the Minister, if that phrase is in the business plan, what does it mean to her in terms of money?

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Ms. Lee.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I clarified that in my letter to the committee and all the Members on February...actually, this morning. The five committees that we’re talking about in the business plan is to do it the way we’ve been doing it, which is to have no money in it. That’s not new. There have been no monies to set up children and family services committees. Okay? So we will continue to do that. But we have seen very poor results out of that.

I want to say, the CFSA standing committee report said that you would like us to get a lot more aggressive and have a more robust program. You want us to set this up, five committees, and make it work. What I’m proposing to you, to make it work, it will take some money, and I don’t have new money in the budget.

I guess it’s an issue of how we interpret words. To me, establish child and family service committees means that you will work to establish those committees. The word “work” is in there. The verb is in there. To me there’s an action

involved in that. The Minister states that they intended to do things as they have done it in the past. Well, that’s no action at all. One child and family service committee was organized in Fort McPherson. It fell apart. It’s maybe gotten back together again. I fail to see how this statement, an action to work with communities to establish committees, doesn’t indicate that there will be some work on the part of the department. Work on the part of the department translates into money. Time is money. Staff would have to be doing something. I really fail to understand how the Minister can say that this action is here but it’s not going to cost any money. In my view that has been done in the last five or 10 years and it has translated into zero. If you’re not doing anything, absolutely you’re not going to get any results.

I really am distressed that we approved the business plan as a committee. I certainly did, as a member of the committee, based on what was on the business plan. I, unfortunately, believed what was on the paper. I don’t know if the Minister is suggesting that business plans don’t matter, that what’s on the paper can change so don’t worry about it. Maybe we don’t even need to bother to read business plans, because the department can turn around and interpret the words on the paper almost any way they want. Because that’s what I’m hearing right now. I’m really quite disturbed.

The other part that the Minister has referenced is that the Child and Family Services Act review report suggests a really robust action to set up these child and family service committees. I guess it’s a matter of defining “robust.” I’m reading from the report and it says “amend the act to require the director to provide funds, salary for a committee coordinator, per diems for members’ training, and support to child and family service committees.” I think that’s the same as “work to set up committees; (b) allow flexibility of mandate and function for the committees so that the communities can create a model appropriate to their culture and situation, and (c) allow and encourage child and family service committee members to participate in the process and develop the supporting policy.” That’s not very robust in my mind. I guess if you interpret work to set up committees as spending no money, then, yes, this recommendation is pretty robust because it says spend some money.

I have to say that the Minister in her communications to committee relative to the issues that we’ve got and the lack of funding have taken the most expensive assessment of what we’re looking for. A number of times in the report I believe we referenced child and family service committees which needed to be flexible, which could be combined with other organizations within the communities that are already established. The community justice committees was one that was mentioned. There are interagency committees in a

number of communities. They certainly could belong to that. There’s a huge amount of flexibility in how the child and family service committees could be set up. They don’t need to be funded to the tune of the amount of money that’s in the letter that we got from the Minister.

I didn’t hear the Minister answer the question from Mr. Beaulieu. She suggests that child protection workers need to be trained to the tune of $125,000 a year. I really have to question, if we have child protection workers that need that kind of training, they shouldn’t be in the business of child protection I don’t think. In my mind, a child protection worker is a trained social worker and I really am not understanding what kind of training they need to work with a child and family service committee. It’s a matter of being able to communicate and if social workers can’t communicate, we’re in big trouble. I guess I’d like to ask the Minister again why we have to spend $125,000 to train child protection workers for child and family service committees.

I just want to say that… And I am answering the Member’s question. The business plan speaks of not just the dollar amounts but some of the action items that the department wants to do. Dollars aren’t exactly always attached to some of those action items. It’s a business plan, it’s a blueprint where the department’s going to go, any department’s going to go for next year.

Like I stated before, I think this is about the third time I’m saying it, yes, in the business plan we said we will work to set up children and family services committees, like we have always done before. I am here admitting to you that we have not had success doing that. There were no specific dollars attached to doing that. We said we will continue to work on those. The way we’ve been doing it is we have, from the headquarters, asked the authorities to go out into the communities and work with the communities. The only community that has shown interest so far is Fort McPherson and that’s been going on for about five years. We’re still at a very delicate stage of getting it going. What we have heard on the ground from the people who want it, people who are really involved in Fort McPherson, is that they need more resources and support to do that. They would like some training to be able to work on that. Everyone would like honorarium because they know that in other committees they get money to attend these meetings. We’re just simply identifying that if the Assembly and the department really want to get this on the ground, I need to go before the next budget cycle and ask for some real money to do that.

I think it’s in the interest, actually, of the committee to make sure that to have your recommendation implemented, there has to be some money behind that. There are no contradictions between business plan and what we are saying here. We have always

planned and we do continue to work on setting these up. But I believe in order to do that right, we need to spend the money.

I’m going to ask Paddy, the deputy minister, on what we mean by training the child protection workers. Sorry. Dana.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Mr. Heide.

Thank you, Mr. Heide. Ms. Bisaro.

I can squeeze this question in here. Mr. Heide just said it’s $4,000 to $5,000 to train one worker.

Minister Lee.

No, $45,000.

Oh, $45,000. Okay. That’s fine. So you’re suggesting that we might train one worker three times in a year. Is that correct?

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Mr. Heide.

Thank you, Mr. Heide. Ms. Bisaro, your time is up. I’m going to go to the next person on the list. If you want back on the list, let me know. The next person on the list is Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Sitting here, flashback for the last 16 years. I think I’ve heard the same excuses from this department. To find a way to avoid doing what you’re legally obligated to do. Right now we went out of our way to have a public review of legislation that was brought into place back in the 13

th

Assembly. Four

Assemblies later we’re still talking about the same issue.

We have some 600 children in care -- 600 -- at a cost of over $12 million a year to keep them in that system. I think it’s critical to realize that we have to find a way of breaking that cultural style of dealing with children. We have to find a way to reunite those children with their birth parents and find a way to get them to remain in our communities, not be taken away, and make the appropriate investments on prevention.

I heard all the Members talk about prevention is key. Preventing the system from getting there in the first place. Intervening early enough that you intervene with the families that you know are having social challenges. That you’re dealing with the fabric of what those families are going through, whether it’s substance abuse, poverty, addiction. That is the core problem we are having with a lot of these families. The key to that is to have a system in place that’s transparent and includes communities solving the problems at the community level. That’s why it’s critical that these committees be activated, implemented and given the adequate resources to do it.

I mean, we’re spending $12 million. If you can even take 60 of those children out of the system and reunite them with their families, just think that you’re saving yourself 10 percent. That’s $1.2 million. That’s the money you’re looking for. The achievement is 10 percent of what we have right now. Is there a way that we can decrease those numbers by 10 percent in this fiscal year and also going forward? Can we achieve that under the system that we have?

I have to disagree with the Minister saying don’t worry about it, we’ll work it into the next budget. Excuse me, but this is the last budget of the 16

th

Assembly. This is it. This is what we have to work out of to see any major changes going forward.

I’d just like to ask the Minister about re-profiling the dollars that we already have in the system, the $12 million we’re already spending on children services, and also looking at the resources we’re spending on structures such as boards and agencies. I need to illustrate again that the Beaufort-Delta health board has a budget of I think $41 million with an increase of I think about $6 million from the previous year. It’s $12 million. There’s an increase from last year to this year for $4 million, but again, you don’t have a board. It’s the public trustee that oversees the board, so that money that’s there for the board that’s not being used for the board, can those dollars be used to establish these types of committees? That’s an option that I’m putting to the Minister. There’s money identified for board type of activities such as the health board in Inuvik that does not exist. It’s in the budget. Can you move

those dollars to establish those types of committees in the Beaufort-Delta region?

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Minister Lee.

Mr. Chair, I think the challenge we have here is a timing issue, because the standing committee report came out in October. By then we had gone through the business plan review, the budget was wrapped up in January and presented to the House in February. There was not enough time or space in the budget to incorporate as much as the Members thought that we should. We did accept many of the recommendations but there are pending resources.

The second thing is why don’t you just take 60 kids out of the system and use that money. I’d have to say if any of those 60 kids could be taken out, they shouldn’t be in there in the first place.

I say again what I said to MLA Beaulieu, that I agree with you that we need to make some decision to put the money up front. Children and family service committees in the long run, if well resourced and well run, would work with the communities and within the communities with the community leadership and the community people to take on the responsibilities about how to address child protection issues so that they don’t get into the foster care system. Okay. That is a long-term goal that I agree with. To do that properly I’m saying that we need to at least follow the models that we have that work, like the community justice committees and such.

I know some of the Members say why don’t you just lump up with them, but there are some rules and structures in place that we need to change. We’re talking about changing the way we do child protection, which I agree with, but it is not as easy to just say, okay, just take that money, take the kids out, reduce the foster care payments or any of the residential care and just use that money. I have to tell you that would have a consequence.

And the board money, I have to tell you that we are under a system deficit, so there is not money for me to take out to do this. Thank you.

Mr. Chair, I’m not too sure where the Minister is coming from by taking 60 kids out of the system, that basically it’s not going to solve the problem for me. There are probably 60 kids in the system that technically shouldn’t be there in the first place. It’s because the process did not allow for transparency and a program to be in place to prevent them from being there in the first place. I don’t think you can ask any kid that’s in foster care do you want to be there. I don’t think they want to be there. I think the issue has to be how can we as government live up to the obligations we have under legislation, called the child and family service

legislation, and live up to the obligations that are in that legislation.

We as a committee went out and spent months on the road on this issue, we heard loud and clear from people right across the Northwest Territories, and they all were saying the same thing: we have to prevent the system to happen in regard to the children that are now finding themselves in the system regardless if it’s foster care, youth justice, and more importantly, what is going to happen after the residential school nightmare we’ve all gone through. This is nothing different. We’re doing something that basically has happened in the past that we’re trying to do using a different method, but again, we’re ending up with the same results.

I’d just like to ask the Minister, like, Fort McPherson, using numbers, just rough numbers, they’re spending about $30,000 a month on kids in care in Fort McPherson; a month. That’s almost $400,000 a year in one community. If you were able to establish a committee to work with the families in that community, get those kids reunited with their parents and also take them out of the system where they should be, again, I’d like to know how can we, as a government, bring down the cost of delivering this system in our communities, get the number of kids that are in that system, find a way to work with the child and family services committee, which is key, find community prevention to community problems and allow the communities to work it through using these committees. I know for, like myself and the Minister and meeting with the child and family services committee in Fort McPherson and also with the deputy, these people mean well. They’ll do it practically for nothing as long as they can help the families in their community.

I’d just like to ask seriously is there a way of reprofiling that $7.4 million or $7.6 million in regard to foster care in regard to prevention programs to find a way to work the system so that we can try to pull the kids out of that system of being institutionalized, regardless if it’s foster care and taken away from their communities, their families, because I think the legal costs in the long run and also the cost to the system is going to be a lot more than a $200,000 investment now in regard to preventing and also finding ways of working in the system. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Your time is up but I’ll go to the Minister for a response. Minister Lee.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We do continue to work with Fort McPherson to set up that committee there and part of what I would like to see happen there is to have less children in care in McPherson. I agree with the Member that Fort McPherson has one of the highest number of children in care. So that is a long-term goal and we will continue to do that. I want to make that clear.

We will continue to work on setting up more children and family services committees.

In the communication I had when I met with the committee on the recommendations of the CFSA review it was made clear to me that you wanted immediate action and a lot more aggressive strategy to do that. This is why I’ve said, when we reviewed how do we jump start and get ahead on what we’ve been doing until now, the missing variable is we need to resource this.

I think we should be careful when we speak about children in care, because there are lots of children who are in care who are there because they were neglected or they were sexually abused. They are suffering. While we can talk about preventing and helping families so that children don’t get to that neglect and abuse, the fact of the matter is a lot of children in our care have been abused and neglected.

The long-term work of children and family service committees is to have a community presence, a committee of leaders and concerned citizens who are supported and resourced and who will take on the task of working with families, helping them, working with child protection workers, working with health and social services, working with any other people in the community so that the families are supported, children are supported so that they don’t get into the system. This will take a lot of concerted effort.

Mr. Chairman, I want to say I am committed to doing that. I think Fort McPherson has the best chance of getting ahead of this than any other community, but to do it with five committees, because so far we’ve been relying on our staff and management in the authorities to do it as part of their work. I think we need to create a position that’s tasked to doing this or else it’s not going to happen as quickly and as well as the committee wanted it to happen. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister Lee. Next on my list, Mr. Beaulieu.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just wanted to get back to my earlier questions about the cost and some of the responses that we are hearing from the Minister. This cost is too high; there is no question about it. This also assumes a 12-month fully functional committee, five fully functional committees from April 1

st

to March 31

st

,

2011-12, at this cost. We heard that, yes, it costs $45,000 to train a child protection worker to switch from a court system to working with a committee. Well, if that is the case, and that probably is the case, then we are training five of them at once in order to set up this committee.

I am still not understanding the half a million dollars worth of training that would be required in order to get these committees running. That is still not

connecting with me. We have $45,000 to train all five of them to come in as a group to work with committees versus courts. Okay, that is good, but the budget is $500,000, so there is quite a discrepancy there.

Again, we also are looking at this budget here in children and family services. We are looking at a 12-month budget again. That is assuming that these committees are not up and running and there is no impact whatsoever. What we are saying is the committee is, if we get these committees up and running at a lesser cost than this and they are functional and they have an impact, which we are suggesting it will have a positive impact on the budget here, we should be able to do it. I don’t know what our next moves will be, but I am really curious about why this number is here. Why would the department present a number to us at, say, a quarter of a million dollars to set up one committee, more importantly, half a million dollars just to train five community protection workers to be able to come out of the court system? That is 125 times five communities, right? I guess it is $625,000 worth of training that the department is proposing in their responses to train five people to work out of the court system into a committee. These are people that are social workers that have the degrees in social work, is my assumption, but the department is suggesting that it is going to cost $625,000 to train these guys as one. That is the most glaring. The rest is not too bad. That is the most glaring one of the costs that were provided.

I would like the Minister just to explain that cost to me in that context, five people, $625,000 worth of training required within this time period in order to get these committees functional. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Minister Lee.

Mr. Chairman, I just wanted to reiterate that if the committee is happy or it is acceptable to them, that we continue working on setting up these committees as the way we have been and do our utmost to get them set up, I am happy to accept that and we will continue to work on that. We will be obviously using existing resources to do that, but I was under the assumption that the committee wanted us to get more aggressive about it. This is why we came up with a plan. I would like to ask Dana to give you details on how we arrived at these numbers. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister Lee. Mr. Heide.

Thank you, Mr. Heide. Mr. Beaulieu.

Mr. Chairman, that is fine.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Next on my list is Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just wanted to say I appreciate the Standing Committee on Social Programs’ belief that they wanted more answers on the review of the Child Family Services Act. They wanted some money. They wanted some commitments from the Department of Health and Social Services. They wrote to the Minister and the department three weeks ago. From where I sit, I see this is the last week we have to approve the budget. The timing of this is very suspect. To bring a response back to the committee in the last week at the 11

th

hour when we know our backs are up

against the wall, there is little room for concessions, there is little room for negotiations. It leaves a lot to be desired.

I think that the Standing Committee on Social Programs is owed a better way of doing things than what has transpired here. To take three weeks to get back to them, we have been through this process before. The Minister has been here a long time. We know how things work around here. We know we get bogged down. We know we don’t have a lot of time left, so what is the department’s answer? We will hit them with this response. We know it is not what they want, but we will hit them with it on a Monday during the last week of budget session. Well, to me, that is not good enough.

I think you should have been back to the Standing Committee on Social Programs much earlier. There should have been more time to talk. There should have been more time to negotiate. Your budget has been deferred. Who knows what is going to happen from here, Mr. Chairman? You have to answer questions and you have to compromise and you have to work with the standing committee. I don’t see a lot of flexibility left in this process right now. There is some frustration here.

Again, I think if responses were given back to standing committee in a more appropriate time frame, I think we could have avoided this. I am supporting my colleagues on the Standing Committee on Social Programs to get some more information and to get addressed what issues they wanted in that letter. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. I didn’t hear a question, but I will go to the Minister in case she wants to make some sort of response. Minister Lee.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I don’t have anything to add to that. I don’t agree with him, but those are his comments.

Thank you, Minister Lee. Next on my list is Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Again, I am hoping that the Minister will try to give a little bit here because I think that is what is going to take to get us out of this challenging problem realizing that we are dealing with a budget which basically has major capital expenditures but also we have to realize that there are flexibilities in regards to re-profiling the dollars in regards to community health programs. We have some $69 million in that area. We have money for mental health addictions. We have dollars in regards to dealing with the NGOs in our communities and I think somebody touched on it earlier, but we have interagency committees in our communities that meet every month. We have mental health and addiction workers, we have social workers. There’s got to be a way somehow that they can sit down and formulate either through a committee structure or working in conjunction with each other.

You know we had a very interesting presentation from the Minister of Justice today of trying to find ways of dealing with the justice system and basically you’re preventing people to work out situations, especially when it comes to family matters and avoiding using the court time and the court processes, but committing to an intervention program that works with the Department of Justice. They’re doing that and I was glad for the presentation, but again, the department is doing it with their resources in house. They’re not asking for money outwards.

So it’s using the expertise. I know that in regard to the cost of having people fly back and forth, the technology is there today. In every health centre we have telemedicine, we have systems in regard to the Internet. We have boardrooms set up for teleconference through conference centres. These are already in place. You can avoid the cost of travel nowadays because of the technology that we’re using. So that cost savings that you’re talking about could be used to integrate these systems.

I’d just like to ask the Minister in regard to the resources that we’re expending in the budget, and again, I think the health boards are the key. The health boards are the ones that hold the resources, we block fund them, but if those dollars aren’t being expended where they’re supposed to be going, then we have to find a way to either redirect those funds so they go directly to the areas, such as the establishment of the child and family services boards in the different communities.

I have to follow up on Mr. Beaulieu’s point. We should be focusing on where we have the highest number of children in the system. Focus in those communities and try to find ways of preventing and bringing down those numbers in those communities with high numbers. If we do that, I think the savings we’re looking at will pay for this initiative tenfold.

So I’d like to ask the Minister, can you consider those alternatives and options realizing that we have to find a way around this. We can’t keep blaming each other. I think by doing nothing, we know what’s going to happen. We have to do something here. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Minister Lee.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’m not familiar in detail with what Justice has proposed. I’ve had a look at it, but I don’t know exactly how it’s funded, so I’m not able to compare.

But I’d like to just reiterate that the department is and has always been committed to working to set up these committees and the one that we are closest to getting some results is Fort McPherson. If the Member’s wish is that we continue to work in that and use whatever resources we have within and the staff we have, the management and the

authorities to do that, then we will continue to do that because that’s part of our mandate and nothing will change, nothing has changed from that. I just thought that the committee wanted us to be a lot more aggressive and including honorarium and doing it differently, because as I said to you, and I’ll be the first to admit, that we have not seen as much results as I think the committee recommendations would like us to see. So if it works for the committee that the department continues to work on this within the existing resources but still continue work on presenting this as a new initiative and go for allocated resources, I could do both.

So I think for some reason somehow the communication was that we are not interested in setting up committees and that’s not what we meant to say. We are committed to setting this up as we see it. To see some real concrete results we do need investments into that initiative. So we will proceed to do that for the next business plan, but if the Member is saying, and I think that’s what he’s saying, is that you should continue to see what resources you can use to see what we can do, sure, of course, we will continue to do that and I have no problem doing that.

I don’t think I need to say to anybody here that almost all programs under Health and Social Services are a bit stretched, whether it’s mental health or anything. But we will use our existing resources to see how we can move forward. Thank you.

Just to remind the Minister and also Members of the House that in order for these committees to be established, they have to basically request it. Right now there’s only one board that has requested the establishment of child and family services. So technically under the legislation you have to receive a request from a particular community to carry this out. So it’s not saying we’ll get five out there today. It’s sort of an application-based format that you have to go through under the legislation. By the legislation where you basically have to request of the Minister that you accommodate your community’s wishes by establishing of those committees. So all we’re asking is that you consider a possibility of achieving five communities in this fiscal budget cycle. Again, those communities have to request the establishment of these committees. Once you have them established or the community requests them, then you can basically address the dollars as the requests come in.

So my understanding of the legislation is that in order to establish these things, you have to get a formal request from a community to establish these child and family service committees. So we’re looking at that process to take place, but the direction we should aim for is trying to accomplish five of those within the next fiscal year. So that’s

acceptable to the Minister that we try to form like that and I have to agree, let’s focus on working with those communities that have high numbers, get them applying for establishment of those types of committees and then look at the resources it will take to implement them. Thank you.

I can accept what the Member is saying because that is basically what we are doing, which is continuing to work on setting up five committees within the resources we have and using our existing staff. We won’t be able to do honorarium and other things that we would like to do, but using our existing resources to do that. The Member is right; I’m not sure that the legislation requires that the community request it, but certainly we couldn’t get this started without having the interest and participation of community leaders and some focused energy on it. I would like to just ask Dana to give you some information on what our experiences have been in consulting with the communities.

Thank you, Minister Lee. Mr. Heide.

Thank you, Mr. Heide. Mr. Krutko, your time is expired. I have nobody else on my list. We’re on page 8-29 with Health and Social Services, activity summary. Mr. Bromley.