Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The honourable Minister responsible for Transportation, Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. First of all, it’s Highway No. 4, not 7, and secondly, Mr. Speaker, I know the Member, for having been a Member of this House for the past eight years, I would think that he would know the difference between a sole-sourced contract and a negotiated contract.

Mr. Speaker, if he’s going back in Hansard, I challenge him to find one example of where I stood up as a Member of this House and said one thing negative about a negotiated contract with an Aboriginal company in this territory. I challenge him to find that, Mr. Speaker.

Clearly, we can see how thin skinned the Minister is by turning it into an issue like that. As I said to start off, my issue, quite frankly, is the process, but if it hurts his feelings, I mean, I can rephrase my question.

I have to actually admit I liked his quote, and that will be my question, which is it’s not about the competency or the fair price, but his question was: How can we guarantee these things without going through an RFP process? Mr. Speaker, that is the question.

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Before we go on, Members, I want to make sure that we

are here for a reason. It is to represent the people. We have the question and answer. Respect one another. In regard to your little shots that you are taking here, I am not liking it right now. Keep it in order. Mr. Ramsay, you have the floor.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I agree with you on the respectful dialogue that has to happen in this House, but if the Member is in one statement he uses terms like “sleight of hand, little respect for taxpayers, embarrassment, insult, shameful, back door, dismal and cannibal,” that makes it very difficult to have a respectful dialogue with a Member that is conducting himself like that.

Let’s just stick to the issue. The issue is we are negotiating a contract with Det’on Cho Corporation, the business arm of the Yellowknives Dene and Chief Drygeese territory.

Mr. Speaker, I take very seriously the allegations that we are insulting the public’s intelligence, that we are doing things nefariously. Mr. Speaker, we are not. We are being as transparent and open as we possibly can with Members of this House. Thank you.

Thank you. Point of order has been called. Mr. Hawkins.

I would like to do a point of order on 23(i), imputes false motive. The Minister is suggesting a nefarious conduct or suggestion by me. That is not true. I also follow that up under the same issue under 23(j) and 23(k), which falls under charging an MLA with some type of falsehood, as well as insulting and bad language that causes disorder of this Assembly. Mr. Speaker, quite frankly, nefarious is quite a strong word. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. I will take it under advisement and I will get back to the House sometime next week. Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My question about the new love affair for the Department of Transportation for a negotiated contract, how many sole-source negotiated contracts or similar types of documents have been signed under this Minister’s watch since taking the helm of the Department of Transportation last fall? Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, on an annual basis, 80 percent of all contracts that the Department of Transportation has are tendered. Twenty percent would be negotiated. If the Member wants detail in the past year, I can provide that for him. Thank you.

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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I will take that particular detail as the Minister had

offered. What better learning experience could any particular company get from a potential contract by actually applying themselves in a constructive way by actually tendering documents to try to win? If we are talking about capacity building, bidding on contracts is one element of capacity building. That is the question, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, much like the Member’s press release, I don’t really understand the Member’s question. Thank you.

The honourable Member for Hay River South, Mrs. Groenewegen.

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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There is a considerable amount of work that has to take place in order to use a piece of infrastructure specifically for a youth treatment facility. Like I indicated, almost 100 percent of the youth that attend treatment are forced into treatment. There’s not a whole lot of youth from the Northwest Territories that are going into treatment at this time. There’s not a whole lot of youth identifying themselves to have alcohol or drug addiction issues at this time. So until we have a program developed that addresses youth treatment, it is very difficult to commit to using any facility for youth treatment. But we would look at any facility that could be used for treatment. Thank you.

So let me understand; the Minister is not denying that there are many youth in the Northwest Territories that could benefit from treatment, but there are not youth that are coming forward, identifying themselves as candidates for treatment and the ones that we are

sending to the South are being forced into treatment because they’ve come in contact with the law or have been referred there kind of as a desperate measure. So we have a drug and alcohol problem amongst our youth and we don’t really have any way to get them into treatment. They don’t really want to go do treatment. So they’re coming out and looking for a facility in which to treat them. Wow! We’re deferring a problem. We’re deferring a problem until later.

I actually have the statistics right here, and I’ll table it later, on the number of youth in the Northwest Territories referred for treatment. In the last three years it’s like five, four and three. That is like a sad, low number.

Does the Minister have any idea of how we could encourage, any program that could encourage these young people that are addicted to drugs and alcohol to seek help and seek treatment at an earlier rather than later stage in their life? Thank you.

Thank you. There is the problem, the fact that there are five, four and three youth going to treatment. It’s very difficult to have a facility that services that type of number.

What we’re looking at with the Mental Health and Addictions Action Plan is we’re going to the communities and we’re trying to find ways where the youth can get treatment using one of the things that the communities asked us to do, is use the elders. Take the youth and the elders out on the land and see if that works as a treatment option. Because if they are self-identified, those are the numbers we have. If they’re being forced by the justice system or their parents, those are the type of numbers that we have at this time. It’s very difficult to put youth in an infrastructure type of residential treatment.

As MLAs we’ve heard the desperate cry of parents who have children that are addicted to drugs and alcohol that are turning to us as a government and saying what can you do for my child. Is there any mechanism through the Department of Social Services, through community wellness workers? Is there any tool that this government has access to that could work with these youth to encourage them to seek help, to help them self-identify as having a problem and seek help? It’s almost unbelievable to me that we have this big a problem with drugs and alcohol and yet we as a government say hey, we’ve got no need for treatment facilities because they don’t want to participate. Is there a mechanism within the department through our existing staff that could help with this? Thank you.

Right now the department, working with health and social services, is spending about $8 million targeted at treatment, mental health and addictions. But as

people know in the House, a lot of that is for adult treatment; $2 million to Nats’ejee K’eh for adult treatment and $6 million to community counselling programs. That’s targeted to everyone, including youth. This is what we have. But the community wellness plans that we’re hoping to develop, that we will develop and that will complement our action plan, hopefully will identify ways that the community will see or advise us how they see their own youth being treated.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Minister raises the Nats'ejee K'eh Treatment Facility on the Hay River Reserve. That is an underutilized, to a large extent, facility. They do have co-ed treatment. They have men’s programs; they have women’s programs. Is there any chance of taking that existing infrastructure, the counsellors and the folks that are already working there, and having some time designated for youth treatment? Thank you.

Yes, I think we can do that if we talk to the centre. As we talked about trying to do some specific alcohol treatment in that facility so that we’re trying to utilize it more. We can talk to the community about specifically putting one of those blocks of time in for youth. Thank you.