I have a question on the Minister’s answer. I’m wondering if the Minister has indicated to the executive that this is a priority, this is something that we feel that Hay River has been left out of the process somewhere along the line. They designed a new health centre and excluded the 10 long-term beds that are currently in the hospital.

Has the department and himself stressed the fact that there is some shortage that is going to be happening very soon once the new facility is open?

Mr. Speaker, the department is aware that the long-term care right across the Territories is a priority. We are doing various things like trying to get the current long-term care beds up to full staffing. Also, we are adding long-term care beds within the overall system.

Long-term care is a territorial program, so even though long-term care exists in Hay River, there are other long-term care beds where we are expanding. Yes, we are doing what we can to make sure that the department does understand that long-term care is a priority. Thank you.

I respect the Minister’s answer and I understand the long-term beds solution throughout the North, but we are dealing with Hay River, one of the largest centres in the Northwest Territories. I am hoping the Minister’s statement doesn’t mean that he’s looking at putting Hay River residents elsewhere.

Is there a commitment from the department? I know the Minister of Health has indicated, in a public speech, that they are looking at solutions in Hay River for those 10 long-term beds.

Mr. Speaker, the plan is not to move people that are from Hay River that require long-term care into long-term care beds outside of Hay River. All the long-term care needs in Hay River will be addressed within Hay River. Thank you.

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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I indicated in my statement, I am just a little bit bewildered that we’re making a 50-year plan without some of these answers already being made.

My question is to the Minister of Health. Has the existing hospital, the old hospital, been part of their assessment for keeping the long-term care beds in Hay River? Have they included that in their assessment?

Mr. Speaker, no, we had not assessed H.H. Williams as a long-term care only facility. We had assumed that when the new health care was built, all of the services would leave the Hay River current H.H. Williams Hospital. Thank you.

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

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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We recognize that Nats’ejee K’eh is not operating at full capacity. There is no question about that. Also, the people do successfully complete Nats’ejee K’eh. We don’t have an instrument that’s going to determine whether or not the Nats’ejee K’eh graduates were fully successful in achieving their battle against addictions, because at which point do we measure success? Is it one year of sobriety? Five years? Or is it a lifetime of sobriety after that? We are trying to get a feel from the communities and the people that have gone through Nats’ejee K’eh, through the community counselling, and then making a determination whether or not that is successful. But we do know that it is operating well under capacity. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, the Government of the Northwest Territories, through the Liquor Commission, made about $46 million last year, 2011-12. That’s the money they made. They contribute about 3 percent of that to promotion of healthy style living and responsible drinking. Nats’ejee K’eh runs on a $2 million budget. The

capacity rate is about 45 percent. That runs roughly about $14,800 per client to take a 28-day treatment program.

Has the Minister given some stern direction to the Department of Health and Social Services, saying that Nats’ejee K’eh needs to change its program so that people in my region and other regions can come down there that would make it successful, and that would fill that centre and not be at 45 percent?

Mr. Speaker, as per our earlier discussions in the House, I have gone to see the board, Nats’ejee K’eh. I’ve met with the board at Nats’ejee K’eh. The board and the executive at Nats’ejee K’eh are sending a proposal into our department to look at different ways that they think they can deliver the addictions program at Nats’ejee K’eh to have greater success and also open up the options.

Currently, they have only men’s programs and women’s programs only. They don’t have youth treatment and so on. They were going to propose the various types of treatment, perhaps even family treatment, youth treatment, and male and female treatment, and come back to the department. I have not seen that proposal as of yet. However, they indicated to me, when I met with them, that they are going to send me that proposal. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, it has been reported that 85 percent of reported crimes in the Northwest Territories are alcohol and drug related. Ninety percent of inmates of Northwest Territories correction facilities have addiction issues.

With the usage of Nats’ejee K’eh and looking at the programs, is the Minister looking at a culturally relevant program? I believe that these numbers have to reflect a lot of the smaller communities, and a lot of the inmates in our centres are Aboriginal people. Is the Minister seriously looking at a drug and alcohol treatment program, not a mental health and wellness program?

Mr. Speaker, that seemed to be the problem, that they had moved away from purely alcohol counselling to more of counsellors that have degrees in mental health and that they looked at a lot of this as mental health issues. It appears as though the communities that want to use Nats’ejee K’eh would like to see that become more of an alcohol counselling type of facility as opposed to a lot of the mental health counselling requirements that are now associated at Nats’ejee K’eh. That’s the exact review that we had asked the board to come back with, an alcohol type counselling versus something that had a lot of mental health type of counselling such as only counsellors with their degrees in mental health who we doing the counselling there. Thank you.

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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In the Sahtu we have a high population of youth, I think about 79 percent, that are 15 years and over. Can the Minister tell me where the youth go for drug and alcohol treatment programs in the Northwest Territories?

We are looking to try to develop something at Nats’ejee K’eh. As I indicated, perhaps some treatment programs that would be built in in the summertime for youth.

Right now all of our youth that end up in treatment end up in treatment in southern placements. I think that the numbers of youth going to treatment, that type of treatment where they are placed in a southern treatment facility is very low. I think I at one time used the number five youth had gone to treatment over a two-year period from the Northwest Territories. So it’s difficult to build a program around that type of number, but we figure that if we can adapt something that’s in the North and targeted to youth from the North that there may be some uptake at facilities such as Nats’ejee K’eh. Thank you.

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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In continuing with my theme with the Beaufort-Delta Regional Leadership Council, upon returning back to Yellowknife I had some information in my mailbox regarding nursing services in a couple of the smaller communities in the Beaufort-Delta region. On two separate occasions over the Christmas holidays, there were two communities that only had essential services of nurses, and my questions are for the Minister of Health and Social Services.

My first question is: Knowing that you’re going to be low on nursing or have staff shortages for that time in those communities, was there a plan put in place to restaff those positions during that time, and even before then, how long did the Minister and his department know that they were going to need staffing in these communities? Thank you.

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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We’ve always known that there is a staff shortage of nurses right across the Territories. We also know that we have a separate governance system in every health and social services authority across the territory. We can’t share resources as though

we have one single governing system with doctors or nurses the same. So the health authorities with their own governance system get the nurses in, they hire the nurses or they hire locums to fill in these positions. So in reality, the department is not specifically aware where and when the nurses are not going to be, although they advise us that these places would have only essential services for certain periods.

As the Member indicated, in one place for 11 days they only had essential services. So we are aware all the time that there is a shortage of nurses, but where the authorities will deploy these nurses, we are not completely aware of that. Thank you.

I have a concern, because it’s during a high time where there are a lot of incident rates, such as people going through a hard time during Christmas, depression and those types of areas where there’s a possibility of something happening.

The Minister has also said that authorities don’t share their staff, but he’s always preached about this Yellowknife doctors pool going out to the communities. That’s where I think that when the department finds out that there’s going to be a staff shortage in the community, that they make a plan and create a plan so that people in these small communities have those services should they need them, especially the emergency services.

My next question for the Minister is: What was the action plan should there have been an emergency for these two communities? Thank you.

Thank you. Other than providing information to all of the community groups in the various communities where the health centres would close, with the exception of essential services, I don’t know if the Beaufort-Delta Health and Social Services Authority actually had an action plan in place that would say that this is what we were going to do in case of emergency. I suppose that they would treat it like any other medical emergency. If there was a medical emergency at any time while there was staff at the health centre or not, they would be treated in the same type of urgency. Thank you.