Mr. Chairman, I look forward to the review in the springtime and having some further discussions. I want to ask the Minister in terms of going forward in this area here, Mr. Chairman, it seems that we are spinning our feet here in terms of getting help for people in our communities. I recall an old lady in Colville Lake that talked about having a program on the land. It has been about seven years now since I have been in the Assembly. It is very difficult for this government to put a program on the land. We spend about $2 million a year in Nats’ejee K’eh and we see that every year we have a hard time putting drug and alcohol programs on the land. I wonder if we really are listening to the people.
Again, I come back to my same comments that I made before. Are we really listening to the people? They keep asking, can we get a program? We get these three-day programs, but we really need a strong program on the land that won’t cost much. It will save this department a lot of money, save the families a lot of money and certainly it will bring the families together. If we don’t show any type of leadership and motivation or some courage by taking the bull by the horn and putting a program out there...
Families do want to go out there, yet we are not there yet. We have to fight the bureaucracy and the system. I guess it is frustrating at times, but I am not going to give up yet on this notion of having on-the-land programs. I want to ask the Minister in terms of when the Minister does her review, will there really be emphasis to Aboriginal people like
the old lady in Colville Lake? Now that she is getting older, she is telling me it would be nice to have programs on the land. I wonder if the bureaucracy and the Department of Health and Social Services gets it. Are they still stuck on facilities like Nats’ejee’ Keh or mental health? It is the culture you are dealing with. The culture is being heavily influenced by a lot of things. We need to move in that area in the Health Promotion Program. We can save the communities a lot of money, but we are not. This is what the people are telling us. Why should they keep telling us what to do? We keep asking them, but it is just like we are spinning our feet and not listening to them. We need to move away from that, Mr. Chairman.
It has been seven years, and yet I haven’t seen a document that says this is how we are going to do the program on the land. I haven’t seen it. It is frustrating to sit on this side going back to the communities. You can work with families, children, fathers, everybody, but we have them all separate, even with the issue of residential school. It is right across the valley. Our jails are full with people that, for whatever reason, have put them there. People are killing themselves, young people. I talked about that earlier. Today we have homeless people. We have to give them hope and inspiration to do something. The only way that the elder told me -- and I believe the elder -- is if we have our system that supports to go on the land. That is the way I believe. But somehow our health programs don’t quite honour that or respect it. They give us lip service, but their actions are very weak when it comes down to actually doing it. I have experienced it with this department and other departments. Some departments are a little better than others, but can you really tell the old lady and the elders in Colville Lake we will now do a land program?
Now there are young boys in more trouble than ever because we haven’t helped them out. We need to listen to our people. Youth are asking for help. If there is a death in the community of close family, we tell them to get over it in three days and go to school, and they are expected to sit in school and deal with this emotion. We need to put them out somewhere where they will get good help. Mind you, this is only one part of the health programs that needs to be changed. I wonder if this department is big enough to make those kinds of changes and have faith. That is what I wanted to tell this department. I am not going to go over my wish list again because I could send them all what I said in the last seven years and ask them to follow up on some of those things. That is what I want to say, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.