Thank you, Madam Chair. Just before I continue on, I guess I’ll take a couple different focuses here.

In terms of Health and Social Services, I know it is our biggest budget that does pose a lot of challenges that I’ve seen being in the health and social services field for many years. We have to continue to try to combat these challenges at the same time as trying to find ways we can invest in projects, programs and services that will cut down the costs and care and treatment that we so easily look at funding rather than looking at areas where we can start doing the prevention, promotion, education so that we start building more healthier and educated residents of the Northwest Territories.

Back in January I attended a Beaufort-Delta Regional Council meeting and the Minister has attended one of those previous. This was the second one that I had the opportunity to attend, and after the first-year resolutions there wasn’t very much action taken towards what our leaders in the Beaufort-Delta region wanted to see. I’m taking this opportunity now just to highlight some of the things that were brought up in those meetings. There were three days of really intensive, engaging meetings with all Members of Cabinet, and ones that are specific to the Department of Health and Social Services I just want to put on the radar here.

One of the areas was foster parenting continued to have a challenge not only finding foster parents but supporting foster parents in the home with the families and support services that are lacking in the communities that need to be addressed. I did make a Member’s statement on it – I think it might have been one of my very first Member’s statements during the session – on how we support the foster parents in the communities so that the ones that are kind hearted and compassionate to do work. That’s going to continue to be on the radar.

Mental health and addictions was another issue that was brought forth. Something that was very interesting to hear was the right to a second medical opinion. In some cases when we are having issues where we don’t have the staff, in terms of nurses or doctors, and we are having over stress in some of our medical staff and the patient feels that they haven’t had the opportunity to get the right services they need, they want to create some kind of policy where they do have the right to a second medical opinion. If that means even leaving their community to go to a regional centre or even to Yellowknife that would catch something early, early detection, prevention, or even getting them the right services that they do need or the right diagnosis as well.

There was concern of the education, prevention and care of cancer patients that was brought up in the region. That was a big concern of the leaders of the Beaufort-Delta region, as well as interpretation services in the health centres. I do understand that would be collaborative work between the Department of Health and Social Services and Education, Culture and Employment and the language secretariat. A lot of people in our communities of whom English is not their first language, that’s where they might have some areas where there can be some challenges. I also understand the challenges of interpreting medical terminology into certain languages. That’s something that really does need to be looked at because the people that don’t have English as their first language do have a hard time understanding the right treatment that they do need.

My second area of focus here is some of the proceedings that have just recently happened within the House and some of the stuff that we brought up. I do appreciate that the Minister did commit to four detox beds, I believe last week in the House. We did talk about two detox beds in the north, two in the south. We also discussed the important need for detox beds. I appreciate all the hard work that’s coming through Justice and all the work in getting drugs and alcohol off the streets, yet we still have people that are dealing with substance abuse, and alcohol and drug use. The detox beds are definitely something that are needed and would help people get the proper treatment for the issues that they do have.

Another suggestion that I did make last week where the Minister did talk about possibly bringing a supplementary appropriation forward, was early intervention, outreach, integrated team effort of nurses, court workers, teachers, something that would catch our students early on to give them the right resources that they need in moving forward to become successful residents of the Northwest Territories and become part of our society.

A couple of things that I’d also like to discuss was, in January we were able to do a tour of Stanton Hospital and it was an opportunity for myself to get educated and walk through and listen to the staff, and see the spacing concerns and challenges that the department has over in that building and support all the efforts in moving forward with that as it is a territorial hospital. I have been there a few times to visit patients from the Beaufort-Delta region. I do know there are challenges that need to be addressed and something that needs to be looked at a lot sooner.

A supplementary appropriation that was mentioned in the budget address in regard to the Anti-Poverty Strategy, I look forward to that in our proceedings and discussions. What we’ve been hearing is there will be some recommendations coming forward this summer in terms of looking at implementation for some of the things that they’ve been hearing, which is great.

Then, just in our deliberations since our budget dialogue process began for this fiscal year budget, what was mentioned earlier was the midwifery. There’s got to be some good options and good work that we need to move forward on. Obviously I would refer to the midwifery report a few times. Although I don’t have the file here with me, I will make sure that I do bring it down later on or even tomorrow when we get into the discussion of services. Speaking to some of the people that use the Midwifery Program, suggestions are that they need two midwives. Obviously midwives also have lives of their own and they do get sick and they do need vacation time. When one midwife leaves a community, there should be somebody that can step in and fill the role. Even going further, if we do put it into a community such as Hay River, it would be great to have an outreach midwife that would visit the surrounding communities so that you’d have the two services in Hay River but also do something proactive and get out to the communities and do some work in there as well.

We focus on chronic disease management, and I was able to attend a really nice workshop here last year and talked about a lot of work in prevention and promotion. Obviously the NWT Rec and Parks Association do great work in diabetes initiatives, Active Living, Elders in Motion program that all deal with chronic disease and management. When we talk about management, as I mentioned in the House, we’re not talking about building more homes and more beds, we’re talking about ways that we can keep our elders in the homes and be living independent lifestyles.

A big thing for me is always mental health and addictions, looking at ways we can address those, but we’ll get into detail on that later.

The last area that I want to focus on is the reports. I look forward to hearing the report coming from the Minister’s forum. Obviously I did have some questions on that. I hope that what we hear will be something new and innovative, and not stuff that has been repeated from Members on this side of the House. There was a lot of money that was put into that.

Two other reports I want to focus on are the Child and Family Services Act recommendations. Even though we are waiting for the act to pass, I think there are recommendations in there that are very important that need to be addressed. We will work on those as we continue.

Also, the coroner’s report, there were some recommendations out of that 10-year review of the coroner’s report that were made specifically to the Department of Health and Social Services. I just want to see where the Minister is on those recommendations and if there was anything that was done in terms of creating some type of legislation, or LP, or bring something to this House and to Members so that we can start creating preventative measures that will protect our people and find ways that we don’t have to go through any of these situations that come out of the coroner’s report, which is, when you read it, very devastating and very tragic. It all starts here in this House and we have an obligation to act on those recommendations.

That’s all I have for now. I look forward to the next three days. Thank you.