Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. The Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In my Member’s statement today I talked about the opportunity here for hope, purpose at the downtown day shelter. My questions, of course, are directed to the Minister of Health and Social Services. My question specifically is this: What services, such as addictions treatment or employability type of programs, would he be willing to do as some outreach to help capture some of the potential and give people a bit of hope and opportunity for the future there? Thank you.

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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I can’t come up with all of the services that would be offered in the shelter, off the top of my head, but I can say that the day shelter is a project that has a committee overseeing any of the projects and so on. The committee has members from the YK Health and Social Services, BHP Billiton, City of Yellowknife and our department. We can work on putting something together and provide to the Member that we can lay out what services could be offered to the individuals that frequent that shelter. Thank you.

A number of weeks ago I was there on a Sunday dropping off some food and people were openly drinking. Does the GNWT support that type of behaviour, and if they do, if you could put that officially clearly on the record? And if they don’t, my question is: What do they plan to do about that particular problem? Thank you.

The department does not support public drinking. This is not supposed to be a drinking establishment. It was some place to

provide a day shelter for individuals that had nowhere else to go during the day. If this is officially a complaint that people are drinking in the day shelter, I will contact the department, the department will make contact with the RCMP and the RCMP can check it out. Thank you.

Will the Minister of Health and Social Services be willing to provide some access services for people to get into the addictions stream for treatment? In other words, would he be able to put some type of counselling process down there to be able to offer people addiction treatment opportunities? Thank you.

I know that the community counselling services are available to everyone in the communities, so also available to everyone in Yellowknife. These members that are going there, we could maybe provide some information to them, advising them that counselling for addictions is available near where the day shelter is, and that perhaps that would be a method of informing them, and also getting them to go take counselling within the city. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Your final, short supplementary, Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m having trouble following his last answer. Is the Minister saying services are available and he can establish them in this particular facility and in a manner that could encourage people to take this path? Thank you.

I don’t think the counsellors are going into the day shelter to counsel the people that are there, but there are services available in the community. What I’m saying is that we can advise the people that are there, that are staying there during the day, the individuals or the organization that’s running the shelter, we can provide them information on what counselling services are available, and they can provide that information to the people that are resident there during the day.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The Member for Inuvik Boot Lake, Mr. Moses.

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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I don’t know the exact time. From what I understand, the individual must remain sober for some time and also attend counselling prior to going into treatment. However, there has been a bit of a call from communities that this thing should be shortened and should be reduced, that when an individual’s time has come where they recognize that they have to go to treatment right now, that should be available. We are actually looking at that to see what type of success rate we would have if we were to do that instantly. That it is the minute the individual wants to go to treatment that we try to find a spot for them right away. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, I think the Minister answered that very well. It goes to show where our deficiencies are within the government system. We don’t have any services to help our people who are struggling with mental health and addictions, especially the addictions. There is no support out there, no services. There are no detox centres that we can house our individuals that need help.

In his Minister’s statement, the Minister mentioned that he will ensure that existing services like the Nats’ejee K’eh Treatment Centre and detoxification services are effective. I am not too sure which detoxification services he has mentioned. If he can tell me what those are and if he plans to have any of these detoxification centres in communities that have alcohol and liquor establishments or even liquor stores. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, the department sees that as probably the number one gap as we talked to other Members about service gaps. That is detoxification. Detoxification is a program. It is not a treatment. We don’t have an actual facility for individuals to go to detoxify. However, it is a program that we would work on.

We see that as a service gap. We’re not sure that we’re going to build infrastructure around trying to work on detox, but rather develop some programs that will be used to help people to detoxify before going for treatment. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, I guess I am going to have to say I disagree with that statement. Programs are good, but when people are in the system right now and they are battling addictions, they are going to need a detoxification centre to clean up their body and clean their system out, so then they can have a clear mental picture of

actually going to those programs where they will get help. I think it is putting the cart before the horse, as some Members have said before. We need to detox.

In regard to the Minister’s statement, there are four goals that he mentioned. One area that he doesn’t talk about is prevention as a goal that was set out in his action plan. Can I get the Minister to give me a reason why the prevention is not one of the four goals mentioned in this action plan? Prevent it before we have to treat it. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, the nature of all of the action plan is prevention. If we are able to incorporate a good action plan around mental health and addictions, that is overall prevention. The whole action plan is about prevention, about trying to defer or avoid future costs for treatment or future costs for having people in the hospitals and so on. The whole idea of this program is to reduce those costs in the future to do the upstream work so that we have positive impacts downstream. Thank you.

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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, prevention is huge and I think we need to think outside the box here in terms of either creating a harder tax on liquor sales or creating some type of legislation that would make it harder for people to continue to abuse alcohol and drugs that we have in the Northwest Territories. Is the Minister willing to look at existing or create new legislation that will prevent people from becoming more addicted to alcohol and drugs? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, that’s a difficult question. Creating legislation to move some money from liquor sales, tax on liquor sales to help with addictions and mental health and so on is one thing. If that’s what he’s referring to, then that legislation is something that would be developed by the Department of Finance.

I’m not sure what type of legislation we would have to develop in order to prevent people from consuming alcohol. Drugs are illegal. Alcohol is legal. We need to develop legislation around alcohol, but what type of legislation would prevent people from consuming alcohol when it’s available? If you have the money, you can buy it. We are faced with that. I don’t know how to really answer the question. Thank you.

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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I would like to ask the Minister of Health and Social Services what is your long-term plan for the elders in the Mackenzie Delta for long term-care. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.