Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In a brief preamble in follow up to some of the discussion today on post-traumatic stress disorder, I myself experienced a traumatic event as a child which has carried over into adulthood. I’m almost 60 years old and I still have claustrophobia because I was in a building that was struck by a tornado when I was a child, and I did not see it coming. I heard it but I did not see it. To this day, I want to see what’s happening around me, and that’s why I don’t like being closed in and that’s why I sit beside the door. No, seriously, these kinds of things, at the
time, my parents said, okay, everybody back to work, like nothing had happened, but there are people who are dealing with all kinds of trauma that happened to them, probably far worse than being in a building that went up in a tornado, and there isn’t help for them in the communities.
I floated this idea past the previous Minister of Health and Social Services and today I’m going to put it past the current Minister of Health and Social Services. Would it not be possible to bring professional, renowned services into the Northwest Territories on a tour to the communities where they would meet with the people and develop a relationship? Then they would go back to wherever their practice is in the South and those people could make appointments to talk to that person on the phone, so they could look forward to that, so they would know that if they were in difficulty or they wanted to continue on with their counselling that all they had to do was talk to that person on the phone. Is this not a model of care for things like post-traumatic stress disorder which would be helpful?
We, obviously, are not going to get professionals in this type of treatment and counselling in every community in the Northwest Territories. We probably couldn’t even get that kind of specialized treatment here in Yellowknife, but I know there are contractors out there that would go into our northern communities, that would develop the relationship with the client, would be there for them, come back on an annual basis, something like that.
Is that a model we’ve considered? Could we think about it?