Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. The honourable Member for Kam Lake, Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. On Friday I spoke about what’s happening on the streets of Yellowknife and a young woman of 16 who is caught up in drug abuse and risky behaviour. Her mother is struggling to find help for her, with only frustration and anxiety to show for it. The lesson her mother is learning is that she can count on no one for help. Not school officials, not Social Services and not the police. As she says, this has been a nightmare and it just keeps getting worse.

I’m going to use her words to tell you this story, Mr. Speaker. “The RCMP were called to the mall because three girls, aged 15 and 16, were drinking alcohol in public. One of the girls was my daughter. The mother of one of the other girls called me. When I got to the mall my daughter was gone.” Mr. Speaker, she’d already told the RCMP her daughter was on the run, but they never even called her when they encountered her daughter and took

away the vodka. The mother asked the police why the kids were not taken into custody until their parents could pick them up. The answer, she says, was they just kept going around and around to the fact that they took the alcohol away from them.

Mr. Speaker, this was another chance to intervene for the good of these young people that got away, but that wasn’t the mother’s first dealings with the police.

She had talked to them about her daughter’s two thefts, totalling close to $1,000. During another incident in the mall, her daughter admitted to the RCMP to taking the money, but they said it still wasn’t enough to lay charges and they refused to escort her daughter home.

Mr. Speaker, this seems like wilful blindness on the part of the police. It’s a ready willingness to let young people go their own way no matter how destructive their behaviour. The police seem determined not to use minor infractions of the law as a tool or an aid in turning a young person’s behaviour around. Obviously, these young people were supposed to be in school in the first place.

Mr. Speaker, these young people are not legally adults until they turn 19 years old. When they’re in the throes of destructive behaviour, and maybe even falling into addictions, they are not capable of making good decisions for themselves. It’s wrong for our educators, social services staff and police to pretend otherwise for the sake of convenience or cost cutting. When we refuse to take action and refuse to help parents struggling with all their hearts to save their children, just what are we doing?

Mr. Speaker, I seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement.

---Unanimous consent granted

To answer that, I’ll quote this young woman’s mother again. “So here I am, losing sleep, wondering if my child is safe, what she is doing, and praying that the RCMP will not come to my door and tell me she is dead.” Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. The honourable Member for Tu Nedhe, Mr. Beaulieu.

Mahsi cho, Mr. Speaker. I’m sure the youth of Fort Resolution are pleased to see a beautiful youth centre being constructed in their community. On behalf of the community of Fort Resolution and its youth, I’d like to thank the Hamlet of Fort Resolution and the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs for their roles in making this youth centre a reality.

Mr. Speaker, in order to maximize the use of the youth centre, the Department of MACA must put

some funding towards the community for hiring a qualified youth worker that can develop and implement youth programs at the youth centre and within the community.

Mr. Speaker, the days of just supervising youth are long gone and now we need to deliver some constructive, meaningful programs and activities that will build upon the infrastructure that will be finished soon.

There is a need for youth programs and youth activities, youth development work, counselling programs, to mention a few things that are essential to ensure that we optimize the youth centre. However, Mr. Speaker, the Hamlet of Fort Resolution does not receive enough funding in the youth area to hire a qualified youth worker.

Mr. Speaker, I am informed by the hamlet that their budget is very limited and they cannot afford to hire a qualified youth worker that would be able to develop and deliver the programs for the youth of Fort Resolution. Many times in this House I have spoken of youth, and I think that everyone in this Assembly knows that the youth are our future and we must do all we can to ensure the youth are impacted positively as much as possible.

Mr. Speaker, a good, solid strategic plan that looks at improving the lives of the youth today will have long-lasting benefits for all the people of the NWT tomorrow. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The honourable Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Like my colleagues, I rise today with great concern that the midwifery services have been temporarily suspended in Yellowknife effective May 6th . I

believe that this is an incredible disappointment to many families who want access to this excellent service that was being provided to mothers and newborns.

Over the past several years many MLAs, including myself, have been calling upon this government to expand the much needed services in our community, and now the Department of Health and Social Services is conducting a program review and expansion analysis to develop options for the territorial Midwifery Program. Mr. Speaker, all they had to do was just listen to MLAs to hear it was working.

Well, this is both a welcomed and disappointing surprise, Mr. Speaker, because at the same time we’ve been calling for the expansion, now they have to shut down and think about how they want to do it.

Mr. Speaker, there was only one person providing midwifery services here in Yellowknife and truthfully was working way beyond any person’s natural ability and capacity, while at the same time, sadly, they had to turn people away because the demand was so great and the need for this service has continued to grow.

As we all know very well, midwives in Canada are trained specialists who care for women throughout their pregnancy and birth, and further they offer aftercare services to mothers and babies for the first few weeks after that birth. Mr. Speaker, in my view, the midwives are a fundamental part of our health care team of our future in the Northwest Territories.

As I’ve said before, in Fort Smith there are two midwives providing these services, and I continue to hear rave reviews of the work and services they provide their community where resident physicians are sometimes difficult and hard to find. To add to that point, last year in my travels, I crossed paths with the National Midwifery Conference being held in Edmonton. The midwives from all across our nation who were taking part in that program discussing what they’re doing there had nothing but great things to say about the examples being done here in the Northwest Territories. More specifically, they commented about the great work being done in Fort Smith as a blueprint to the future success of midwifery in Canada.

Building upon that success in Yellowknife, there has been only one midwife for some time. It was a huge challenge, but clearly she was up to it. Now the local program has been suspended. If I can describe it this way: the program here in Yellowknife was a gleaming beacon of success with unprecedented support from the public, health care partners, mothers, families, and politicians like myself. With support like that, perhaps it was doomed from the beginning.

I will have questions for the Minister later today.

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Item 4, returns to oral questions. Item 6, acknowledgements. The honourable Member for Nahendeh, Mr. Menicoche.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I rise today to advise the House of the passing of a charismatic, true man of the North: Mr. Edwin Lindburgh of Fort Simpson. He was 81 years of age on May 3, 2011. Our thoughts and prayers are with Mr. Lindburgh’s wife, Sue, his daughter, Carol, and all his family and many friends. He will

be greatly missed by the people of Fort Simpson, Nahendeh, and people from all over the world who met Edwin Lindburgh over the years.

Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. Item 5, recognition of visitors in the gallery. The honourable Member for Thebacha, Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to take this opportunity to welcome our new chief public health officer, Dr. Lorne Clearsky. Dr. Clearsky is the community medicine specialist from the Waywayseecappo First Nation in Manitoba. He graduated from the University of Manitoba medical school in 1990, completed his family practice residency in 1992, and began working in northern Manitoba for five years as a fly-in physician for First Nations communities.

He comes to us from the Calgary Health Region where he was a deputy medical officer, the medical lead for the Aboriginal Health Program, and clinical assistant professor at the Department of Medicine at the University of Calgary.

I’d like to ask you all to join me in welcoming Dr. Clearsky to a long and productive work time here in the Northwest Territories and get to know the people of the Northwest Territories and provide his valuable skills to them. Thank you and welcome.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The honourable Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to recognize Wendy Lahey, a constituent of Weledeh and a keystone in the democratic process towards responsible midwifery services.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Item 7, oral questions. The honourable Member for Mackenzie Delta, Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are directed to the Minister of Health and Social Services and are in regard to my Member’s statement. In this day and age we still have critical programs and services not being delivered to a lot of our more isolated communities. I think in order to have healthy and vibrant communities, the building block of any community is to develop a healthy side to those communities. I’d like to ask the Minister what his department is doing to ensure we have essential programs and services delivered in all

communities so we have healthy and vibrant communities.

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. The honourable Minister responsible for Health and Social Services, Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As a government we are doing a number of things collectively. Health looks at all the health services with the nursing stations and with the medical side, the social services side, the child welfare piece. We have significant education presence in communities. We have Municipal and Community Affairs that is there with communities as they work on the services that lead to a better quality of life as well as on the recreation side. We have ITI there supporting business, local business and small business, to do work at the community level to help with the economy. We have Transportation there building infrastructure with Public Works and Services.

Collectively as a government we spend a significant portion of our $1.3 billion in the communities trying to deal with the issues that the Member has talked about so passionately over the last 16 years.

Again, I think it’s important that we do as government seem to have a lot of programs and services in the larger centres. A lot of the time we lose sight of those programs and services that do not exist in a lot of our communities. I think I’ve talked about respite care and midwifery, caregiving programs, wellness programs, and even mental health and addictions programs. Those are the building blocks for healthy communities. I’d like to ask the Minister what the department is doing to ensure that it streamlines the funding that is going into the area of Health and Social Services, and ensuring that there’s a base funding for programs and services in all communities so that at least they are meeting the minimum needs of all our communities.

If I may use the specific example that the Member referenced, the midwifery review is going to look at potential birthing services in other communities across the North, keeping in mind that the Mackenzie Delta, Nahendeh, Tu Nedhe, Nunakput, Sahtu, Monfwi, and the Deh Cho have no birthing services of any kind. As we look towards what is the best service and how do we provide those services, that’s one of the key factors we have to keep in mind.

Again, in order for programs and services to exist, you need bodies on the ground. It does take investment. We have health centres in the Northwest Territories that don’t have nurses in them. I think it’s a shame in this day and age that we are funding health centres without the core staff to run them. I’d like to ask the Minister what he is doing to ensure we have nursing services, and programs and services in communities where we

have the basic infrastructure already on the ground, yet we’re not delivering programs and services.

As a government we have committed many millions of dollars coming up with our own program for nursing in the North to train Northerners up to the degree level. We have expanded into the nurse practitioner range. We are trying to work with nurse graduates to give them enough additional training so that they can actually go out into the communities where they may be by themselves or where they may in fact be playing a lead role like community health nurses or nurses in charge. While we still have some ways to go, we have minimized our reliance on local nurses and casual nurses and remain committed to training Northerners for those roles.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Final supplementary, Mr. Krutko.

Again, I think that people have to realize that a lot of times our services in the communities include one doctor’s visit a month. If you’re lucky you might see a social worker once a month. The same thing with regard to core service positions, whether it’s dental care once a year. That’s the type of stuff that people want to see improvement on.

What are we doing to improve the number of days that doctors and professionals spend in those communities and expand that service so they can see more doctors visiting, more nursing days in our communities, and the same thing with dental care?

Last week, speaking as the Minister of Finance, I gave a fiscal update that indicated the financial fiscal constraints that we are under as a government and that our ability to deal with a lot of new program demands is very limited. This applies specifically as we look at the very great demand from the communities to look at service improvements. We will do what we can through the business planning process, through the forced growth that we do have available, but we are limited by our fiscal constraints that we are currently under. Through the business planning process coming up for 2012-2013 we’ll be looking at trying to address more effectively some of the issues that the Member has mentioned.