The healthy families is not really linked into the addictions treatment. We could talk about Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder within these groups where we’re trying to build awareness of the issue and the cost of the issue, as the Member indicated, many of those factors. For the mothers to segue from healthy families into treatment centres, I don’t think is something that is part of that mandate of the healthy families or the community children resource centres.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final supplementary, Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thank you to the Minister. Obviously, all of these could be important portals for addictions treatment. Not that they need to provide it in their own right, they have different objectives, but they need to be linked. I’m talking about linkages here.

My last question is: Have we developed and begun a curriculum that builds awareness amongst young teenagers, awareness of the consequences of both alcohol and drug addictions to both the realization of their full potential and to the well-being of their future children?

Building a curriculum for students realized that that was something that has come as a request. There are health programs and addiction programs and so on in the high schools. That is something that ourselves… It’s not early childhood development work but ourselves and Education that would be prepared to collaborate on in the development of curricula for that, but it’s within the mandate of ECE in order to develop that curriculum.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The honourable Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to ask the Minister of Health and Social Services if his department has ever done a cost factor of somebody who has abused alcohol or drugs. What has it cost this government? For example, it costs about $90,000 a year to house somebody in our justice system if that person is in there for an alcohol-related crime. Has the Minister done a comprehensive cost factor in regard to someone using and abusing alcohol in our communities?

We just know that it does cost a lot of money in a lot of areas. Like the Member said, if a person was to stay in a corrections facility for an entire year because of abuse of alcohol, it could cost the government $90,000 to house them in there. We know that a high percentage of the hospital stays are due to alcohol abuse. We know the costs at the health centres due to alcohol abuse. We know that a lot of the money for counselling that is spent on counselling people at the community level is alcohol abuse. We know that at Nats'ejee K'eh another $2 million is all as a result of alcohol abuse. It is a substantial cost to the system. I don’t have the figure with me now, but I’m pretty sure that it would be fairly simple for us to pull that information together.

I look forward to the information the Minister is going to send over to the House in regard to the cost factor. It’s about dollars and cents. Again, I go back to the point Mrs. Groenewegen made earlier that it’s not normal in our communities to see people drinking on the roads, fighting, swearing. It’s just not normal.

I want to ask the Minister, there’s an elder in Fort Good Hope that said there’s a miracle standing right before you. He said, I haven’t drank in 10 months. It’s a miracle that I’m not drinking. He said, it’s just common sense to take our people out onto the land.

If it costs that much in our system, could the Minister look and see if a program for the people, for the Sahtu communities that makes sense to take people out on the land to look at a recovery program where, out on the land, it’s normal for us to be a family?

As I indicated earlier, that was a common theme for the small communities that we visited, that they felt that treatment, on the land programs that they would do with the people that were suffering from addictions, families, elders, youth, was the way to go. The department has made available through the authorities $25,000 to any community that wants to put a program together for treatment on the land. Some communities have taken advantage of that. We think that in some of the communities that is a way to go. One thing was that the communities felt that wasn’t enough money. That’s one of the things we’re hoping to get from this addictions forum in communities that want to go that way. We may be able to move money from other communities that don’t want to treat their people on the land. This is something we want to look at. There is some money available for that.

I had some research done and it said that 42 percent of all our youth aged between 15 and 24 binge drink. Binge drinking is five or more drinks that they’re taking at one time. We

have a serious problem. It’s coming in the next five, 10, 15 or 20 years from now.

I want to ask the Minister, would he look at Nats'ejee K'eh, only having a 46 percent occupancy rate, would he look at Nats’ejee K’eh being designated within the life of this government, or sooner, as a youth alcohol and drug treatment centre.

I’ve had one discussion with the forum here in Yellowknife at their inaugural meeting, and I indicated to them that one of the things I would like them to look at is change in the type of treatment that is available at Nats’ejee K’eh. One of the things that I asked them to look at was a block of time where the youth can utilize the treatment centre, making sure that they have the proper counsellors in there and have one block of time, probably in the summertime, for the youth to be able to attend treatment at Nats’ejee K’eh. We are looking at that.

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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, 28 percent of our general population binge drink. Binge drinking is not normal and it’s not normal for us. Growing up in our communities we have seen that. We thought that was normal. We thought that was okay.

Can the Minister outline any type of plan to work with us to tell the communities and show the communities that binge drinking in our communities in the North is not normal? What kind of campaign does he have in place for us to work with them?

I’m hoping that this is the type of information that can be brought back from the alcohol forum with the community indicating that they have high incidence of alcoholism in the community, and this is how they hope to address the issue. I would like to see the work of the forum before I can say that this is what I’m going to do.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The Member for Hay River North, Mr. Bouchard.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I indicated in my Member’s statement, I am concerned with addictions in the Northwest Territories and the lack of productivity it’s causing in our industries. My questions are going to be for the Minister of ITI.

Has the Department of ITI had any involvement with a drug and alcohol program for industry?

Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. The Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment, Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Certainly, when you have 3,000 migrant workers working in the Northwest Territories and people in small communities aren’t being employed, you have to start asking some questions. I’m glad the Member brought that issue up today, because I really do believe that we need to get more people working. If you get a training program where there are 24 individuals from a community and 12 of them fail a drug test, that certainly is an issue and it’s something that we have to pay attention to.

Training programs that are being put together, and I look at what is happening in the Sahtu – and the Norman Wells Land Corp has put together a training program run this past summer and it will be run again next summer – it’s important that basic life skills are taught to the younger people that want to be employed, in this case, with the oil and gas development in the Sahtu. The same can be said for mining. People have to learn that when the alarm clock goes off, you get out of bed and you go to work. You collect your paycheque and you keep working. Those types of basic life skills have to be ingrained in young people across the territory.

We continue to work with industry to find ways that that type of training can get out there and have a meaningful impact on our economy, and allow people in our small communities and across the territory to be gainfully employed.

I’m glad the Minister understands the problem here. My question is, though – the diamond mines have been here for a long time, for many years – what programs has his department worked with the diamond mines, for example, to get these people in the Northwest Territories to the job to be able to contribute to the economy of the Northwest Territories?

We haven’t quantified what that impact would be on the economy. At the Department of Industry, Tourism and Investment we wouldn’t have programs like that. As I mentioned in my previous response, our goal is to work with other departments, with Health and Social Services, with Education, Culture and Employment to find a way to get those types of training programs out there. This department is not responsible for that type of training. But we do certainly work with industry. We recognize that it is a problem. Industry has brought that to our attention. Again, it’s not just mining and oil and gas, it’s other, you know, tourism. It runs the full gamut of the economy of the Northwest Territories and it’s certainly something we recognize.

I want to thank the Member for raising it. It’s a big issue. Perhaps we should take a look at quantifying what it means and the impact that addictions and people not able to pass a basic drug or alcohol test to get employment and what it means to the

unemployment rates in some of our communities. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Member for Mackenzie Delta, Mr. Blake.

Mr. Speaker, my questions will be directed to the Minister of Housing today. When I asked questions about the Joe Greenland Centre in our June session, the Minister indicated that work on renovating the long-term care wing into independent living units would be underway by now. Earlier in this session, the Minister indicated that a tender would be issued shortly.

Can the Minister tell this Assembly why the renovations to the Joe Greenland Centre have been delayed? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Blake. Minister responsible for the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation, Mr. McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. After reviewing the cost of renovations to the Joe Greenland Centre, we had to go back and look at whether it was feasible to do the renovations again on building it. It is over 35 years old. It has had two or three major renovations. We had to have a look at that and see if it would be easier to just construct a new facility.

After we reviewed the proposal, we realized there was a lot more work that had to be done to significantly upgrade the facility to bring it to meet current codes. Thank you.