Mr. Speaker, we will be working with my colleagues. I anticipate that we should be able to respond probably early in the new year. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Inuvik Boot Lake, Mr. Moses.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My question today is dealing with my Member’s statement that I gave yesterday in dealing with mental health and addictions. We have had a lot of discussion here today on infrastructure and some new capital projects that are coming to the Northwest Territories. Alongside with that, unfortunately, we do get a lot of health and social issues that do come with these big capital projects.

My question is for the Minister of Health and Social Services and deals with mental health programs and infrastructure. What is the plan to fix the lack of services that we have in some of our communities, especially in our regions, and the lack of human resources to address these mental health concerns? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Moses. The honourable Minister of Health and Social Services, Mr. Beaulieu.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The intention of the department is to continue with the Community Counselling Program, trying to address some of the wellness services in the community, increase the wellness services in the community, and also reviewing the Mental Health Act. The department is waiting for the release of the national mental health report from the Canadian Mental Health Commission. I will be attending the National Mental Health Summit in Winnipeg in February as a part of the release of that commission report. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, with all due respect, I don’t think we need a Mental Health Act or see a report to know what is happening in the communities and the neglect that we are having on people who really need the services for these mental health issues. Once again, I would like to ask: Is the Department of Health and Social Services, not only them but there are other departments that are involved in this, how we can work together to address the issue right now?

It is Christmastime. It is a tough time for anybody that is not getting the services they need. I think it is something that needs to be addressed now rather than later, when we have to review some documents to tell us what we already know. I would like to ask the Minister again, is there a plan in place that can identify these situations or offset the lack of services in our communities right now. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Yes, the intention of the Department of Health and Social Services is to move to prevention. Right now the Department of Health has a small budget in promotion and prevention.

The intention and the direction that I have given the department has been to increase the amount of money we are spending on prevention, and specific to some of the communities where there is a high incidence of addictions and mental health. The plan is to go into the schools to start at the youngest age possible, to work with the kids and so on, and also working with the health professionals at the community level, and move more money into prevention and try to prevent working upstream so that we prevent addictions from affecting the health of the people and mental health people as well. Thank you.

I’m glad to hear that the department is taking a proactive approach in education for prevention and awareness. However, right now, as I mentioned earlier in my two questions, we do have a waiting list, especially in Inuvik. The waiting list for anyone to get counselling is about three months and it is something that needs to be done now to address those issues. We will be coming to a new fiscal year in 2012-13. I was wondering if there was anything on the horizon in the fiscal operations O and M budget within the Department of Health and Social Services to offset those issues of our workers right now that are being over-exhausted dealing with counselling. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The intention is to fill the vacancies of the mental health and addiction workers that are currently in place. Right now there are vacancies which are causing the backlog, and the intention is to move some of those people, if necessary, to out-of-territory options in order to get the counseling necessary for the individuals. But a key is to try to fill the vacancies, which we are having some difficulty doing at this time. Thank you.

That’s all great for the communities that do have vacancies, but like I said, for communities that don’t have vacancies and they are already fully staffed, they are getting overload from some of the communities, especially Inuvik. They get referrals into the region and they’re getting overworked. Long days and, as a result, like I said, we are getting people that are on the backlog for three months to receive the services.

What’s the plan for the communities that do have full staff but are overworked? That needs to be addressed because we’re neglecting the people that are needing those services. Thank you.

The intention is to continue to work with the health and social services authorities. If the Beaufort-Delta has a backlog, then our intention would be to support them from outside the Beaufort-Delta to try to get the backlog dealt with. Again, like I said, we would try to do some out-of-territory counseling, if necessary, and hopefully deal with the backlog. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Moses.

Yes, this department would be prepared to deal with Housing, Education and the Income Support Program, housing programs, public housing programs, so that we can prioritize the counseling needs at the community levels. Thank you.

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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In my Member’s statement today I talked about concerns of addiction. Certainly, as we look at the beginning of this new Assembly, there are many people here that would like to see the addictions problems addressed. Although I know the Minister is new to the job, I would like to highlight a comment made in Wednesday’s Hansard on December 7

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on page 5,

in which the Premier says we need to find creative ways to address addictions, mental health, and promote wellness.

That now brings me to the question to the Minister of Health and Social Services. Is the new leader of that department, who will be setting the course for Health and Social Services, what’s his intention on addressing the addictions issue in the context of the much needed problems to address detox, whether you’re treating alcohol or other drugs such as crack or meth? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The honourable Minister of Health, Mr. Beaulieu.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This is where I had indicated earlier of working upstream. We’re trying to work in the intervention, to try to ensure that addictions that people are facing, and mental health issues that people are facing, that they do not face those issues by us

trying to prevent that from happening. Our intention, again, is to look at increasing our budgets in the area of prevention, hopefully working with children and so on at a young age and also dealing with youth. We think that that type of approach of making the youth and the children aware of the issues and so on, and then as they get older they would be able to avoid the addictions that are apparent now at the community levels and also right across the North. Thank you.

Thank you. I appreciate the answer from the Minister on prevention and I wholeheartedly agree from the approach of upstream. It’s better than being downstream without the paddles. On this particular problem, though, it almost sounds like they’ve abandoned the people with this particular issue. It’s great to provide prevention for those to keep them away from drugs such as crack or meth, and hopefully it will keep them away from alcohol abuse, but the territory really needs a detox centre to focus in on how to address these issues, and in the past they’ve used Stanton, which is not an appropriate facility. So, my question is more focused on what is the Minister willing to do on today’s problem for people suffering from addictions problems? Thank you.

The department is spending about $6 million on mental health and addictions. In the city of Yellowknife the department is supporting programs and the Tree of Peace for addictions programs at the Sally Ann, at the John Howard Society. As far as straight detox goes, at this time we have a ward at the hospital, which is not specific to addictions, but does include addictions. Then there’s also the Nats’ejee K’eh Centre in Hay River that’s there for the treatment of people with addictions. Right now that unit is running at about 50 percent capacity each time they have an intake. Thank you.

I appreciate the facilities or the locations the Minister has highlighted, but in fact those are areas that help people to carry the burden of their addictions, but yet it’s not a detox or a treatment centre by typical design.

Although the Minister doesn’t need to be educated on this particular issue, we know we had an addictions centre downtown that was used for many years, then was closing and then given away. Then they built one on the Detah road and that was closed and now is being used as a training centre. I mean, how many more addictions centres do we have to open and close and still not address the problems?

So, back to the question. We need a detox centre here in the Northwest Territories. Where that is located doesn’t really matter to me. Treating the people of the North is the priority, not the location of this particular facility. How will the Minister tackle this particular issue? Thank you.

Right now the department has some programs in place to address some of the problems. We are enhancing the Aftercare Program for addictions, and the closure of the addictions and detox centre, the closure of some of the treatment centres was something that happened in the past due to capacity, not the capacity of the department but the capacity of the treatment centres. All of the treatment centres at that time were operating with very few clients. The decision was made to roll it up into one centre and try to keep that centre full and operating as efficiently as possible.

At this time, even though we only have one treatment centre in the North, again that treatment centre only operates under 50 percent capacity for intake of clients. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I take exception with the last comment provided by the Minister. We only have one treatment centre, but the problem where I take exception with that is it’s not focused on detox or multi-problems when it comes to alcohol or drugs such as crack and meth. My fear, and the fear of many people, is has this government given up on people with addictions. Will this government finally take a clear stance, draw up a plan and build or even lease a detox centre to treat the people of the Northwest Territories who suffer from addictions? Thank you.