Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I also would like to welcome a former resident of Inuvik, Mr. Dez Loreen, who also was a student youth councillor when I was on town council at one time, and a very good advocate for Inuvik in terms of reporting the news as well as other information that’s happening around Inuvik, Northwest Territories. Welcome, Dez, to the House. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Moses. Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to recognize today, probably no stranger to anyone, Mr. Kevin Wallington from Hay River, former town councillor now the big push on the Polar Egg initiative here in the North and a close family friend. You know he’s a close family friend when he’s a groomsman in both my sons’ weddings. I’d like to welcome him here today.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Today I would like to welcome, too, Dez Loreen. Welcome to the House, Dez. It’s always good to see people from back home. Also, Mr. Colin Eade, our good friend from New Zealand, our counterpart from New Zealand. This is his last day here today in the House. Safe travels back home. I’d like to welcome all visitors in our public gallery here. Thank you for taking an interest in our proceedings.

Item 6, acknowledgements. Item 7, oral questions. The honourable Member for Inuvik Boot Lake, Mr. Moses.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are for the Minister of Health and

Social Services. Quite frankly, I’d just like to ask the Minister how the Mental Health Act is being enforced in small communities where there is no psychiatrist and, in some cases, no nurses to complete a psychiatric evaluation or assessment, specifically in the isolated communities.

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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Mental Health Act is something that we, in the Department of Health, recognize we need to have a lot more resources to be able to address every single issue that can be covered under the Mental Health Act. The act allows us to do a few things within the act. Some with the assistance of a nurse, if there is a nurse in the community, with the assistance of a peace officer, RCMP. Individuals who are reported to have some mental health issues could be apprehended by the RCMP, evaluated by a nurse, if that is what is available. In the small communities we use the resources that are available to try to follow the Mental Health Act if there are mental health issues.

The Minister flowed perfectly into my second question in terms of evaluation put on by the nurses. In the Northwest Territories we have eight communities that do not have a resident nurse. When we come up with these issues dealing with someone with a mental disorder, what is put in place for those eight communities where there is no resident nurse readily available to do that assessment? What is the protocol for the communities that do not have a nurse, that can’t provide that type of assessment?

Previously, in the small communities, we had used lay dispensers to assist us in all of the physical health and mental health aspects. Those positions have been converted into community health workers. In those communities where we don’t have nurses, we have community health workers. Community health workers are used to try to address as many of the mental health issues that may arise in those small communities where there are no nurses.

Can I get a confirmation from the Minister that all the lay dispensers underneath the Mental Health Act were actually transferred to the new job term health workers, and whether these health workers are covered under the Mental Health Act to provide those types of services, and whether they’re going to amend that changing and add health workers to the Mental Health Act so that they understand they’re covered for any type of liability to provide any type of emergency services?

The main function of the community health worker definitely is physical health and the addressing of physical health. Mental health is an issue that sometimes the

mental health worker would have limited knowledge of what to do in a situation and would have to draw on regional resources. In some of these communities, however, we have community wellness workers that can also be used to try to address people that are suffering from mental health issues in the communities. It’s very difficult to have all the right resources and all of the right communities to be able to address mental health issues.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final supplementary, Mr. Moses.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. When an individual is brought to a health centre emergency room by a peace officer or someone in the community under a mental health disorder, a written report has to go to the Minister’s office to ask for the individual to be detained. How is this addressed in the small communities when we have, possibly, communication challenges as well as somebody in the community possibly not being able to fill out the proper forms and allowing these people to get back out into the public when they really do need the help? How is this addressed with these written reports and does he feel a 24-hour period is sufficient enough to get the assessment and the report done?

Thank you, Mr. Moses. I want to remind the Members, short supplementary. Mr. Beaulieu.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In those situations, although I can’t specifically recall receiving any reports from RCMP officers that have apprehended somebody under the Mental Health Act, I do know that we have a director within the system who would maintain a registry of any of these type of encounters or issues that result from an individual that may be apprehended and then the report is provided through the office. The reports don’t come directly to me but should eventually make their way. I don’t believe that 24 hours is a sufficient time in the small communities to allow that report to go through the director, registrar, and then over to the Minister’s office.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The honourable Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The honourable Minister of Justice, Mr. Abernethy.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member is correct; a draft came out in December. It was a rough draft and we’ve taken it out for public consultation and discussion, and we’re seeking feedback and input on that. Much of that has now come in.

On behalf of the steering committee, we’ve got a team of dedicated staff who are actually finalizing a draft. We will have the final product out on March 31st . We will have a draft done before that which,

hopefully, we’ll have an opportunity to share and discuss with committee and other stakeholders.

I guess the draft should be coming out very soon, obviously, if the final is expected by the end of the month. This time frame stretches us, I would say, based on that, into the spring, and yes, we want to get it right to have a strategy that public groups can support and be ready to resource the strategy adequately.

The budget address noted that funding for a strategy would be brought forward as a supp before the next main budget, which is good news. Since we’re gathering comment on the final draft strategy now, will the Minister commit to contracting peer review from outside experts so that we can get the benefit of experienced input from those familiar with other jurisdictions’ efforts and ensure our strategy is the best it can be?

The first step is to get the foundation document done, which will be March 31st . That will be available for public distribution at

that point. The second step is with the steering committee that’s been established that includes members from the Anti-Poverty Coalition as well as Aboriginal governments and other organizations. We’re going to continue to work with them and our working group to actually pull together a response to the framework which will be our action plan which will identify what things the government and other groups need to do to fight and combat poverty here in the Northwest Territories.

As the Minister of Finance indicated, we expect there to be some financial implications of that but we don’t know what those are yet and it’s too early to assume what the working group and steering committee are going to come up with. Once that’s done, we’ll be coming back to the House for some further discussion on what we need to fund in that area.

As far as a peer review, we are but a partner in this project. We are working with NGOs and different organizations, and we are relying on the steering

committee for a significant amount of direction on moving forward. If they are interested in peer review, it is something that we would certainly be interested in talking about, but we do have a desire to get this out as quickly as we can. We have done a significant amount of research with our partners and they will be involved throughout the whole process. They are the stakeholders out there who are dealing with people on a day-to-day basis. I’m not 100 percent sure that a peer review is going to be 100 percent necessary, but we look to the steering committee for some advice.

Thanks to the Minister’s comments. I’d say that’s being a responsible partner, being willing to discuss that idea. There are a number of strategies out there, as the Minister knows, that are very successful and others that are not. We’d prefer to be in the former category. We know this strategy needs to be not only an action plan for integrated cross-government action to reduce the alarming poverty and growing inequity in NWT society. It also needs to fully involve Aboriginal government partners and the business community. I know the Minister has a particular interest there. The need to raise the awareness of society at large, the benefits of reducing poverty is clear.

How will the Minister enhance the energetic participation of Aboriginal governments and business partners, and how does he intend to sell the benefits of poverty reduction as the strategy moves to being released?

The Member is right; that is pretty much exactly what we’re going for, which is why we’ve engaged a steering committee that does have Aboriginal government representation as well as NGO engagement. We have been, and I have personally been, sending letters to the different Aboriginal governments and organizations of the Northwest Territories seeking additional input. We had Aboriginal governments involved in the working groups as well. I will continue to do that. We know that is critical. We know we have to engage all of our partners.

With respect to industry, our steering committee does have a member of the NWT Chamber on it and I have had a discussion with him personally, indicating how important this is to us and how important it is that we have business engaged. We maybe haven’t had as much engagement from business and industry as we have hoped, but we will continue to push and I will continue to talk to industry representatives and Aboriginal government representatives at every opportunity. We are developing a comprehensive communications plan which we will use to get more of that information out and seek input, and the next step is still coming, the development of an action plan which we plan to engage all of our partners on.

Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Final supplementary, Mr. Bromley.