That’s fine.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Moving on with questions I have Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I wanted to follow up on my general comments about

the mental health programs. Specifically, I know the Minister is aware that this House is on record as wanting to see action in the way of diversion in particular, especially diversion from our court systems and corrections systems, which are ineffective without mental health issues being addressed and certainly very expensive and drawing resources away. On top of that, the crime bill, Bill C-10, is exacerbating those costs greatly and detracting from other important programs. My more specific questions for the Minister are, I’d like to start with: What has the department done to date? What is planned for in this budget? What resources have been identified to do that work?

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. With that we’ll go to Ms. DeLancey.

I don’t want to talk about the Social Envelope Committee. I think we’re well aware of that and so on. I’m asking specifically about the Department of Health and Social Services’ work in this area. What work have they done specifically? What are their responsibilities? I think the House is well aware that this has been identified by the House as a priority, so we want to know that things are happening, that the resources are identified. What is Health doing to fulfill their part of this envelope committee specifically? Thank you.

So the unspoken here is that it’s all a gap. We do not have any programs and services in place currently in mental health to assist with the diversion program. Is that what I’m hearing?

What special services are needed?

I’m just having a hard time accepting that this late in the game we don’t know what specialized services are required. This is our own system. I can spend 15 minutes on the Internet, or so could our research people, and find out what all the other jurisdictions are doing, what they’ve had put in place. We’re talking accountability here. What specialized services are we missing that are required for diversion from court systems into mental health? From what I’ve seen, these are just mental health programs. I want to hear now the specifics, so that we can have some accountability in knowing that these are being addressed. What are these specialized services that the deputy minister is talking about to fill the gaps?

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister Beaulieu.

The department is spending $20.168 million on social service delivery, which includes social workers, mental health and addiction workers, mental health and addiction program funding. We have $2.931 million with non-government organizations for residential care for alcohol and drug programs related to addictions, mental health, disabilities and chronic illnesses. We have $2.7 million family violence funding, which includes emergency shelters and counselling services; $1.8 million for community wellness programs including the Bailey House in Yellowknife. Specific to more of the mental health and addictions, that’s what we have in our community health programs and others that are in other pots, throughout the department.

Thanks for the Minister’s comments there. That’s exactly my point. The mental health diversion courts are put in place with no additional costs in other jurisdictions. Sometimes there are additional costs. Usually they’re quite

modest. We have, I’m assuming, a lot of programs, and the Minister has indicated some. This is not the mountain that the department is making it out to be. We passed a motion in this House directing, requesting, recommending. It’s been identified repeatedly in committee work. This Minister has said he’s all about prevention. The question remains, what are we doing? What are we doing for this relatively straightforward request? We can analyze until the cows come home, but tell me what the analysis is? Where are the gaps? What is your responsibility? What will you do and where are the resources to do it towards this end? Thank you.

We are trying to plan. We don’t think that this is something… We recognize there are some technical aspects, legislative aspects to what the Member is asking. What we need to do is we need to plan for it. We want to make sure that we are doing this right. Our responsibility is fairly clear, that if we have individuals that are prepared to divert from… If the court is going to divert an individual to some counselling, to take him out on the land, to deal with him in a different manner, keep him with the family, do the various things that are needed, then we do have the programs in place.

As the Member says, it’s not going to be a real high cost. In fact, we view it in the social envelope Ministers as, actually, a cost-saving measure. We recognize that if we’re able to keep individuals from just going into a corrections system, that we’re saving thousands of dollars a month for every year that we’re able to keep one individual out of the corrections system and into counselling, working with the community, doing things that we think would be positive for the individual to possibly remain in the community and do other things that they would be required to do as directed by the court. We don’t think it’s going to cost money but we think it’s something that we have to plan. We would like the opportunity to discuss this, plan it and do it properly, and we think that by providing what we have in place already, we intend to eventually put this in place. When we do put it in place, we want it to work and we don’t want to be picking people up and then putting them in jail for a longer period of time because they didn’t listen to the court order. We want to have a system that individuals can flow into and have success here and save real dollars by keeping people out of corrections.

Yes, I will.

Would this be in agreement to the Member?

Yes, thank you.

Thank you very much. We’re on page 8-29, Health and Social Services, activity summary, community health programs, operations expenditure summary, $87.998 million. Committee agree?

Thank you. Page 8-30, Health and Social Services, activity summary, community health programs, grants and contributions, total grants and contributions, $69.941 million.