Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The honourable Member for Hay River South, Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Given that we just received the budget address yesterday, very well delivered by our Minister of Finance, I must say. Many minutes of speaking on many pages, I said he didn’t skip or miss a word the whole budget.

On the matter of how we get to the budget and the speech that Mr. Miltenberger delivered yesterday, the address that he delivered, I’d just like to talk about a few anomalies as I see them.

We as Regular Members sit on standing committees that consider the business plans. The departments come to our standing committees, they outline for us what the activity of their departments is going to be, and we have some input. Mind you, a lot of the time that we spend looking at this is us receiving information about what the department is doing. However, even after that it is still received at a very high level. Those of us on this side of the House do not really get a close-up, first-hand kind of look at what goes on in the departments. The numbers that we get are large numbers, generally speaking, and they refer to activities which are also rather large. So if during this process we do come up with a creative idea for a change in focus or a new, modest initiative, we then feed that information back to the government. Alas, by the time it gets to them, it’s generally too late to include it in the budget.

These are anomalies that I see from my perspective and I’m sure the Cabinet could agree or disagree. It’s too late to work them in there, so now we are left with what other options do we have to bring that kind of input and suggestion and change to the process that we would want from this side of the House.

We’re often told that when there is such an initiative or change in policy, or focus, or priority, that the government has no money. So if you want that, Regular Members, then you need to look at the budget and find where you want to cut. I have a problem with that. We’re not in a position to look at that budget and see where we want to cut. Do you notice that when the government has an initiative? Often it will happen, interestingly, and they will say, oh, we have funded that from within. We do not have that opportunity on this side of the House to find out where there could be some money within a department to fund anything that we want as a priority or as an initiative.

I think that when we come up with these ideas, I don’t think the response should be from the

Cabinet, well, you decide where you want to delete something. Because that’s all we have the ability to do, is delete when it comes to the budget. I think we should turn that back to the Cabinet and we should say, this is our priority, you find the money, you tell us what you’re going to cut.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Item 4, returns to oral questions. Item 5, recognition of visitors in the gallery.

I’d like to welcome our visitors here 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 North, Mr. Bouchard.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In my Member’s statement today I was talking about the appreciation night for the Town of Hay River today, but my questions are for the Minister of MACA. I’d like to know what training MACA provides to municipalities for the help of the employees.

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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Through the School of Community Government we have about 11 core courses that a lot of the municipalities take us up on. For example, in 2011-2012 we had 11 training events that were attended by 135 participants. We work very closely with the communities to offer them programs and training that will allow them to do their job a lot better and with a lot of support from MACA.

My next question is: What funding does MACA provide to the municipalities to do its training in the community itself?

The communities are given an O and M budget. When they feel that there’s training that is necessary in their community, then they will, for the most part, use their O and M money to offer training in their communities. However, as I said, again, we do have a lot of courses that are offered through the School of Community Government that a lot of municipalities take us up on, and they meet other people from across the Northwest Territories that are doing similar work and they can share experiences and best practices.

As I indicated, the economic benefit that the municipalities provide to their local economy is very strong and I’d like to know from the Minister if MACA is considering increasing some of the funding they provide to the municipalities to do infrastructure development.

The New Deal that was done about five years ago is up for an evaluation. It was supposed to be evaluated after five years to see how we can improve how we work with communities. I have to say that with all the infrastructure money that we’ve been giving to the communities, they have the responsibility for the projects that they want in their communities. It’s a program that’s worked very well. We’ve heard back from many of the municipalities that have done a lot of good work with the money that they’ve been given. However, we are looking at re-evaluating or evaluating the program and seeing how well it’s worked. In my opinion, it’s worked very well for the communities.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final supplementary, Mr. Bouchard.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Minister indicated that there will be a review completed. Can the Minister tell me the expected date on that review completion?

We’re just starting the work now; however, I will keep the committee updated on the work as we go forward and hopefully have a finished product for them quite soon. I will keep committee updated on the work that we’re doing.

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

Continue, Mr. Yakeleya. Sorry about that.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Would the department look at what type of programs are there for residential school survivors and the ones who are also affected by it?

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The honourable Minister responsible for Health and Social Services, Mr. Beaulieu.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We recognize that a lot of the truth and reconciliation in residential schools have become a very high-profile issue in the government. The department is putting together the action plan that we’re going to be rolling out in the next two years. In addition to that, we have about $6 million, a little over $6 million in the Community Counselling Program. We have one residential treatment facility that’s still operating and we also have about a million dollars or a little over targeted into the communities for aftercare and also for on-the-land programs, if that’s something that the communities are interested in carrying out.

I do look forward to the Minister’s release of that document sometime in the near future and certainly give him support where it’s needed to be. I want to ask the Minister, we do have Nats’ejee K’eh Treatment Program at Hay River Dene Reserve. We have what Mrs. Groenewegen talked about, a facility also maybe being opened up in Hay River. We looked at Inuvik where they have possibly a facility, or even in Fort McPherson. So there are some facilities that are going to be available. I want to ask the Minister if there’s anywhere in that action on addiction or treatment programs, anywhere in the plan of the department where we can possibly slate a residential school treatment program specifically for survivors of residential school.

Within that action plan and also a commitment from the government that we would look at more treatment in existing infrastructure, we will be asking in the action plan that a Minister’s forum be struck on well-respected people within the addictions and mental health field to travel to the communities and see first-hand what is required. We are going to be supporting that forum with a request through a supplementary appropriation of about $300,000 so that they can gather and hear firsthand from the communities what is needed. We believe, from our initial travels, that there is a requirement or a request for some sort of residential treatment in the Beaufort-Delta for residential school survivors.

When we look down the Mackenzie Valley and you look into the communities, we have small communities. In a lot of our small communities probably about 60 to 70 percent of the people who live in our communities have some direct impact of residential schools, so there’s a high need for this. I want to ask the Minister where in his department is there a policy that says that if you, Mr. Yakeleya, want to go to a program for your family and yourself – and I have a lot of brothers and sisters and they had big families

too – where in the policy that we can go to the department and say we want to go to this program. Is there a policy that will take a family of four or five and say you’re going, or are we going to have to wait to future time where we could look at this through the action plan that he’s indicated in the next couple of weeks?

Right now the residential treatment that is being offered is individual treatment. They used to have couples treatment, but it was decided by the facility that they would be better off to have individual treatment, gender treatment, actually. Right now we don’t have residential family treatment available, with the exception of something that could occur on the land. It appeared as though in the communities when we travelled and heard first hand that the communities felt that a solution could be to have families, several families, in fact, going out on the land and going to that type of on-the-land treatment with some counsellors on the land, but at this time we don’t have anything as far as family treatment goes unless they go out of the territory.