Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There have been a lot of developments since the last session on the federal introduction of Bill C-10, the Omnibus Crime Bill. I’d like to recap and investigate our status to date.

The national clamour grows as provincial and territorial research confirms the anticipated balloon

of court, corrections and policing costs resulting from minimum mandatory sentencing. Following a December 9th motion of this Assembly, the Minister

of Justice committed to provide information on the anticipated costs and I’ll be asking questions on that research. An element of that motion called on the government to investigate means of diverting offenders from the justice system using more effective treatment programs and avoiding court and correction costs.

In our meeting last year, the Ministers of Justice and Health promised a comprehensive investigation of mental health diversion court programs to meet part of that need. Again, as called for by this and the 16th Assembly. The need to fight crime at its

causes has recently been again confirmed by the work of a community roundtable on downtown social issues here in Yellowknife.

Unfortunately, provincial and territorial jurisdictions have been unsuccessful in knocking the federal government off of this regressive approach. Even political leaders in Texas say filling the jails just doesn’t work. Despite our overflowing jails and known consequences of Bill C-10, our Minister got a firm no from the Government of Canada on our call for assistance.

Recognizing the need to continue the fight, the Nunavut Justice Minister was damning in his criticism of C-10 and the huge human and dollar costs resulting. We need to promptly cost and document the downloading of expenses and take a harder line, in alliance with other jurisdictions calling on the federal government to pay the cost explosion it’s liable to create.

But most importantly, we need to address our real opportunity with more humane and effective treatment of potential and real offenders. Mental health diversion courts, alcohol, drug and family violence treatment programs, community justice mechanisms, these are the front-end investments that will reduce the costs from years of incarcerations and enable our citizens to live healthy, productive and law-abiding lives.

I will be asking the Minister questions on his progress in recent months on realizing these real opportunities and mitigating the real costs expected from Bill C-10.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The honourable Member for Deh Cho, Mr. Nadli.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. [Translation] When we are here in Yellowknife we are talking about the budget and the people in the community are saying that we do not have enough money. It seems like we have to listen to people more diligently. [Translation ends].

They tend to depend on government to create jobs and opportunities. In the smaller communities half the people who have jobs work for either the GNWT or local governments.

With the current state of the economy this is not going to change any time soon. The employment rate in many communities is under 40 percent. In two-thirds of the Northwest Territories communities it is less than 50 percent. Think about that. In most communities there are no jobs for more than half our employment-aged people. How can we expect people to be healthy, and productive and independent when for so many even the most basic job is out of reach?

If our government cuts back its spending, there could be even more unemployment and even more people relying on income support. The number of people on income support has been rising steadily since the economic downturn in 2008. We typically have more than 1,500 people on income support and it costs this government more than $15 million a year to run this program.

While so many people struggle through life on very low incomes, prices of basic items in our small communities go up and up. The price of food in most of the Northwest Territories would shock most Canadians to the core. To make matters worse, this government has severely limited the caribou hunt in many communities. People are really feeling the squeeze from all sides.

This is the reality our government absolutely must address. We have to develop community economies.

Thank you, Mr. Nadli. The honourable Member for Mackenzie Delta, Mr. Blake.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It is my understanding that the wellness worker position in Tsiigehtchic has been eliminated. It was a full-time position and much needed in the community. This need is even greater in Tsiigehtchic because there is no nurse in the community. The lack of health care and service is acute.

Wellness workers encourage active living and help people shift into healthy lifestyles. They help families and stress the importance of well-being.

Wellness workers are key people in delivering one of the most important priorities of this government. I cannot understand why we would cut this position in Tsiigehtchic.

Residents of Tsiigehtchic have been patient but persistent in their efforts to improve local health

care. Their requests have been more than reasonable.

This government has an obligation to deliver quality health services to its citizens. I know that we cannot have every service in every community all the time, but we have to meet the basic standard in all our communities.

The wellness worker position in Tsiigehtchic should be reinstated and this government should fill it promptly.

Thank you, Mr. Blake. Item 4, returns to oral questions. Item 5, recognition of visitors in the gallery. The honourable Member for Deh Cho, Mr. Nadli.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to recognize and welcome Phoebe Parent, my constituency assistant from Fort Providence.

Thank you, Mr. Nadli. I would like to welcome all the visitors in the public gallery here today. Thank you for taking an interest in our proceedings. Item 6, acknowledgements. Item 7, oral questions. The honourable Member for Hay River South, Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to direct my questions today to the Minister of Health and Social Services, the Honourable Tom Beaulieu. I want to follow up a little bit on some of my colleagues here who touched on the issue of alcoholism in the Northwest Territories and treatment for that condition.

We cannot deny that we have a disproportionate number of our people who are involved with an addiction to alcohol. We cannot deny that fact. It is a fact. It is a disproportionate number. We get somehow lulled into thinking that this is normal. This is not normal. If we had a health outbreak of some kind that came and attacked our people here in the North, we would be on the national news. It would be a national crisis. We would be doing everything to find a vaccine to address it. Because this situation has existed for a long time, I believe we have become complacent as a government.

Alcohol addiction is robbing our people of their health, their livelihood, their prosperity, their peace. Peace in their lives. We as a government need to acknowledge the problem and take a more aggressive approach to address it. I was pleased to read… Oh, first of all let me say that there are many, many paths to sobriety and we need to

explore all those options. To simply name a few, there’s the residential treatment program, there’s the Alcoholics Anonymous, there’s counselling, there’s spiritual healing. You’ve heard of people who have been miraculously delivered from alcohol addiction, so people should keep praying.

I read of an interesting scenario in the Slave River Journal, where the Fort Smith Health Authority has an out-patient program where people can come in for an hour and a half or two hours a day and receive support and counselling. I’d like to ask the Minister of Health and Social Services if he could elaborate on that program for us, where it came from, who is sponsoring it and how we can get that into other communities.

Almost four. Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The honourable Minister responsible for Health and Social Services, Mr. Beaulieu.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I don’t have the details of the Fort Smith program. I wasn’t aware that there was a program in Fort Smith. I heard about it for the first time today.

I don’t have a lot of details about it either. I read about it in the newspaper. It sounded interesting because it isn’t everybody that can leave house, home, family, jobs, whatever commitments that they have, it isn’t everybody that can leave all that and go to a 28-day residential program. It’s at the community level where they can be an out-patient. They’re not in the hospital. They go to this program through the health authority and it seems to make imminent sense to me as one alternative for people to access help. It’s also for people who are sober but want to maintain that sobriety; they can also access this program. I will get the article from the Slave River Journal, I will share it with the Minister and then I will pursue questions on this later after we’ve both had a chance to inform ourselves a little bit more about it on how we can see that on a broader scale in the Northwest Territories.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The honourable Member for Range Lake, Mr. Dolynny.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Unfortunately, today I’m going to be talking about something that obviously shocked the North. Unfortunately, this is a shocking event that happened in Whitehorse but nonetheless it’s our northern family. That is the Rusk family who unfortunately were involved in a tragedy dealing with a silent, tasteless and odourless killer called

carbon monoxide. Again, on behalf of the Assembly, our hearts go out to the family.

With that in mind, carbon monoxide obviously takes on a new role when a tragedy does occur. Most recently we’ve heard of a recent tragedy even in Whati. It’s unfortunate that a tragedy has to come forward for us to create awareness of this silent killer.

I realize that National Building Codes are part of the standards of which the territorial government will endorse and I know that there has been some work in 2010 regarding updates to this code. That said, I have a question for the Minister of MACA, Mr. McLeod. We can’t do a lot with regard to a lot of the building codes in terms of residential housing and I won’t be addressing that in this question, but for public housing my question for the Minister is: Do we have a policy in place for carbon monoxide detectors, and if so, what is it?

Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. The honourable Minister responsible for Municipal and Community Affairs, Mr. Robert McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Obviously, we feel badly for the events that took place in Whitehorse and we never want to see that in any units anyplace in the Northwest Territories. I have been giving the department direction to see about the policy to see what our standards are and see they can be enforced. I’m just in the process of gathering the information right now and until I have the information gathered, I’ll take the Member’s question as notice.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The Minister has taken the question as notice. The honourable Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are addressed to the Premier. I’d like to follow up on my statement but also the Premier’s statement today. I’d like to start off by saying I really appreciate the statement that the Premier did make today and that there is a commitment to action on the part of the government towards an Anti-Poverty Strategy. The Premier, I believe, stated that it is time to begin work. I would say that it is well beyond the time to begin the work, but I’m very happy that it is going to start.

We have heard that basically this work is going to start. We’ve also heard that a strategy is going to be developed based on a document that he is going to table later on today. My concern is that we have a report from a very thorough workshop which was held in October 2010 and there is no indication on any information that I’ve had from the government that we will be using that report to develop our Anti-

Poverty Strategy. I’d like to know from the Premier the timeline, as well, that he’s indicated is pretty much a full calendar year. Almost 10 months. Well, over 10 months if we start from today. I’d like to know if the Premier could advise me and advise the House what the government will be doing in working with people in developing a strategy that is going to take 10 months. Can he give me a bit of an outline of the details on the process that is going to be followed?

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The honourable Premier, Mr. McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to indicate that in addition to the workshop that this government funded for $40,000 which assisted us greatly, we also had consultations throughout the Northwest Territories. We had about 250 people present to the group that was doing the community consultation. We had focus groups and sessions in a number of communities. We had regional advisors from every region in the Northwest Territories. We’ve taken that information and we are releasing the document What We Heard today, and over the next few months we will be working within the government and also working with a committee that will be established called the Social Envelope Committee, and we’ll be working collaboratively with as many people as we can to develop an Anti-Poverty Strategy that will hit the ground running this year.

Thanks to the Premier. I think my question was more to the details as we go forward. I’d like to mention that Nunavut is well into the process of developing an Anti-Poverty Strategy and one of the things that they did was to have a public engagement process culminated in their strategy. It basically took them about a year and I’d like to know from the Premier whether or not our process is going to be similar to the Nunavut public engagement process. They had a team which was representatives of government, Inuit organizations, non-profit organizations and the business community. They travelled to every one of Nunavut’s 25 communities. Is that the sort of process that this government is going to follow or is it going to be something where we have this committee, as the Premier has mentioned, made up of bureaucrats who work in isolation?

I’m sure the Member would be very pleased to hear that we’re going beyond what Nunavut has done. We’ve had 33 focus group sessions. My understanding is Nunavut held one workshop and released the recommendations that emanated. We’re going to go further than that. We’re going to draft the strategy, we’re going to have direction from the Ministers of this government, the social envelope Ministers, and when we are finished we’ll have an Anti-Poverty

Strategy that will be implemented and hit the ground running.

Thanks to the Premier. I’m getting a little more confused. The Premier’s now saying that we will draft a strategy and then I thought I heard him say that there will be some consultation after that.

I need to go back to comments that the Premier made in December, and I believe he then talked about a discussion paper relative to the Anti-Poverty Strategy, that one was in development. I don’t see any reference to a discussion paper in his statement today and I haven’t heard anything in his answers to my questions yet. I’d like to ask the Premier whether or not the discussion paper that he referenced in December has gone by the wayside or is it still being developed. Thank you.

I would like to clarify once again. We will be releasing What We Heard papers, What We Heard from all of our consultations. We are working on a draft discussion paper. We will be working developing that in conjunction with the social envelope Ministers. We met with Alternatives North and YWCA to discuss the Anti-Poverty Strategy and they were very pleased with that approach.