Mr. Speaker, I do not believe we have ever given consideration of a fully supported alcohol and drug addiction treatment centre the attention it deserves. We need thorough, informed debate to examine the pros and cons leading to a clear, evidenced-based decision and commitment to act.
Ministers have frequently said they are considering various forms of treatment. We’ve played regional politics, closing one centre to open one in another region, only to close it a few years later and never providing the support and oversight needed.
We need to remember that beating an addiction is not like going to the hospital because you cut your finger. Beating an addiction is one of the most difficult things a person can do in their lives. We need to treat the issue with the respect it deserves.
The recent Minister’s Forum on Addictions was a respectful process and many people made the effort to express their views. Action taken so far by this government does not match that effort and many people are disappointed. Closing the only NWT addictions treatment centre was a shock. Though, in my mind, not unwarranted, it was poorly communicated. Hiring a coordinator to try to figure out what an on-the-land process might look like is a beginning, but does not, again, meet the people’s expectations.
Let’s take the momentum that the Minister’s Forum initiated and springboard to a clear assessment and debate on what a comprehensive treatment centre can do or not. Let’s set a timeline, do the research and commit to making a decision to pursue a centre or abandon the idea and focus elsewhere. Let’s not bury this potentially critical and currently festering question as a potential action and a Mental Health Strategy that we hope to do someday. Enough dithering, pose the question, encourage research and debate to answer it, make a decision and move on.
In the past I have suggested a promising but modestly tested treatment model developed in the Yukon that showed real evidence of success, which relies, to some degree, on a treatment centre.
Other jurisdictions may have programs we can adapt and base in the North as well. I’m not talking some point in the future. Let’s have the Minister of Health come forward during this session and announce a timeline to make this final assessment. While on-the-land treatment is going ahead and I don’t want to detract from that, we should not be making this up as we go along. We need to look at the latest research and make an objective and soundly based decision on whether or not a treatment centre is a necessary part of our treatment program in the NWT.
We need to put as much resolve into this as we are asking from those who are trying to break their addictions. Let’s get it done. Mahsi.