Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. We’re on page 8-31; however, before we continue, I’m going to ask committee members, as well as the department, if we could just tighten up the questions a little bit and maybe tighten up the answers a little bit as we can move on this activity summary. Moving on with questions I have Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is a page where, obviously, prevention is big. We’ve talked about it on just about every topic that comes up and I just want to stress, again, that that’s often where I’m coming from. I know the Minister is too.

I view early childhood development programming as the number one opportunity we have in prevention. We have Dr. Corriveau with the Minister’s department working away on a framework. I hope we’re going to come up with a really community-based focus on young families, that sort of approach. We have what we have for resources and as we really go to implementation, we will expand those resources. It has to be done well and intelligently and so on. Wherever the Minister sees an opportunity to support that work, I hope he will do that.

My question, just on the Child and Family Services Act and the previous report, I know the Minister is seriously interested and concerned in that area and has attempted to get community child and family services committees up and running and has found it to be challenging. He’s going to continue to focus on seeing that. All other Ministers we’ve had over the last six or eight years have had that same challenge. What are we doing, what is the focus on implementing the recommendations, both in terms of on-the-ground programs and in terms of the act? Can the Minister – I don’t know if he would have this information – give us an update on what number of children we have in care in the Northwest Territories and outside of the Northwest Territories? Let’s back off the specifics and go to the trends. Are the trends increasing or decreasing in those couple of parameters? I’ll start with that.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. We’ll just give the department a minute to retrieve that. Mr. Beaulieu.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We have the numbers of the children that were apprehended. Actually, I guess better yet, the children that are working with the child and family services people or a social worker. Some of them are in a voluntary agreement with the family and some are placed in foster care. We do have a total – I’ll just need to bring this a little bit closer. I would pick a date, Mr. Bromley, because it changes all the time. As of November 30, 2012, we had 582 children receiving services. Of that, 356 of those children were receiving services like counselling, respite services, at the request of parents. Parents do not lose custody of these children of that group. Some are in the custody of foster care but the majority, I guess, 61 percent of the children receiving services are receiving services in their home.

Then we do have the trends as well here, but we’re just pulling up the information. We have so much information here we need to locate the information.

Maybe I could talk a bit about our work with trying to develop child and family services. We had one committee, that committee quit functioning. We’re trying to get that committee up and running again. The community has actually asked that committee be functional again. We had gone to beginning the work in the recommendations of the Child and Family Services Act review, and that recommendation was to try to place child and family services committees in all of the communities where there were children that were receiving services. We were not able to do that. It is my opinion that it would be a matter of sustaining the pressure, I suppose, on the communities to try to get them to come up with a committee from the Department of Health and Social Services or from the health and social services authorities across the territory. An example, I went into the Sahtu, I guess a year after the recommendations were made, and there was no work done on developing the child and family services committees but there was work done in Healthy Families, another recommendation. Which we had direct control over as a department, the money is coming through the department and that was one of the other key members.

As far as the 73 recommendations within that report, what I think we would have to do is show a response to the report. We recognize that in some places we’d have to do the change in the act in order to carry out the recommendations. Some of the recommendations we have acted on and carried out. We can provide that report but it would be difficult to go through each recommendation in this forum. Our information here, the statistics show

that there is a very slight decrease in children receiving services from Social Services.

I realize that there are a whole lot of aspects to this subject and so it’s not possible to discuss it all in this format. Maybe just one last question. The Minister will recall the recommendations that we move from a confrontational, almost legalistic approach, to a more dispute resolution, negotiation counselling approach. Has the Minister found opportunities to work in that direction in the area of child and family services?

The department has provided training to the workers but we’re looking for the specifics of that training, or we can also provide, I suppose we can provide that. We can continue to look for it and then provide the information further on down or provide it in writing, one way or the other. But the department has done some training with the social workers.

Committee, we’re on page 8-31. Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just to follow up on Mr. Bromley’s questions on the child and family services committee and the response back from the committee’s recommendations on social programs from Minister Miltenberger, they talked about the communities wishing to play a role in the Child and Family Services Act. However, the current structure of the committee doesn’t support that. Is that still the case today, in regard to removing this barrier, so that communities can set up their child and family services committees? I know that was a really good initiative when the Minister and I went in there. What happened?

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. For that we’ll go to Minister Beaulieu.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The act is specific in one area that the Member may be referring to. I will have the deputy minister just talk a bit about the specifics of that act and whether or not we have made changes there to remove that specific barrier.

Thank you, Minister Beaulieu. Ms. DeLancey.

Thank you, Ms. DeLancey. Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you for the clarification, Deputy Minister. That is my point here. When? Because the Minister and I toured the Sahtu and people were quite excited about having this child and family committee set up, and we’re finding that that’s not the case today. Is there anything in the plans that we’re going to rectify this issue and continue on with some of the great things that the previous government heard about apprehension of children and how the community can be involved in removing those barriers? Can I ask the Minister as to when this is to be expected? Maybe we have to go back in the Sahtu and do a round two on this issue here.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Minister Beaulieu.

We are on track to submitting a legislative proposal to amend the act in this fiscal year as a result of that 2011 review. One of the key amendments in the act is to remove some of the barriers that the communities had encountered in the development of child and family services committees.

That gives me some hope that we’re working towards some of the wishes of the community. I want to ask the Minister, in regard to the Sahtu, because I know some of the communities were quite keen, and I’m not too sure if they’re going to get stung once, and I don’t know if they want to get stung twice. Those are…(inaudible)…in those communities, because that’s what we told them when we went there and now they’re kind of figuring out if we should really trust the government on this issue here. I’m going to ask the Minister to, again, put together this piece of work that would see the Child and Family Services Act serve the people and take down the barriers that are preventing them from being part of something that the 16th Legislative Assembly heard

in their consultation with the communities.

I would commit to giving very clear direction to the authorities that we would like to strike the child and family services committees. The Member and I had travelled together in the Sahtu and they were very, very clear on exactly what it is they wanted. They wanted to make sure that the children of their community continued to reside in their community. Their issue was that they felt that once a committee was put together, that they would be able to develop some foster homes within the community and place the kids within the foster homes, and that they had the knowledge and they knew their children. They were very unhappy that children were down south and in Yellowknife. At the time the Member and I travelled together, there were children from the Sahtu in BC, Alberta and in Yellowknife and the community was extremely unhappy. They had a fairly high incidence of child protection issues as well. The

three communities of Good Hope, Deline and Tulita all had approximately the same number of children receiving services.

The community did ask us to find a way, remove the barriers so that they could have a committee, and it appeared as though those barriers were there. If it means a legislative proposal to make an adjustment to the Child and Family Services Act quickly, then that’s what we want to do. Meanwhile, though, we want to be able to try to work with what we have to be able to try to put those committees in place.

I will make it a mandate of mine to go back to the authorities. If I have to travel back to the authorities again to have this discussion, then that’s what I wish to do. In addition, I will also commit to talking to the Joint Leadership Council, which is the chairs and the public administrators of the authorities, and put this item on the agenda to talk about ways of trying to create these committees.

Mr. Chair, I look forward to the Minister’s provision on the piece of work that we just finished talking about.

I have one final question. When they’re done with the community consultation on addictions that, yes, people went out to the different regions and communities, does the Minister and his department look at, from those consultations and recommendations, something that he would have in place and plan with his department to implement some recommendations or direction from Paul Andrew and his people coming back to us and report this is what the people are saying? Nats’ejee K’eh’s on-the-land programs, youth or whatever, family programs, we don’t know what they’re saying. We kind of understand a little bit of what they’re saying. Maybe that is the new shift of wellness in the North. Is that something that the Minister is going to advocate on our behalf, to say we have Minister Miltenberger, who probably knows the number of days left in this House, do we have the will and the guts to move this into place where the people are saying we’ve have been heard, we see it. I will leave it at that, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Chairman, the timeline for us responding to the forum’s report is we’re going to try to do a roll-up of their recommendations in April, and then during the May-June sitting of this Legislative Assembly, we are hoping to be able to present, and that’s again targeted to do it at that time to present the recommendations and how we see those recommendations fitting into our Mental Health and Addictions Action Plan and moving forward to address those issues that are identified by that forum.

Thank you, Minister Beaulieu. Page 8-31, Health and Social Services, activity summary, community wellness and social

services, operations expenditure summary, $89.259 million. Does committee agree?

I will combine 8-32 and 8-33 together. Health and Social Services, activity summary, community wellness and social services. Mr. Bromley.

Thank you. Very quickly, Mr. Chair, the Minister mentioned the $175,000 going to the Yellowknife homeless day shelter. That’s an increase, I believe, in recognition of the pulling out of another partner, but the City of Yellowknife has very graciously put in extra dollars on the condition that the dollars that they’re putting in are met by this government. Does this amount, $175,000, meet the conditions and thereby enable the City of Yellowknife to contribute their full amount? Do we know offhand? Thank you.