Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m happy to go with whatever the committee wishes. Thanks to the Member for his comments. We too are really looking forward to moving forward and completing the construction of the long-term care facility and the health centre in Norman Wells. We believe it’s going to bring a new and important service to the residents of the Sahtu, which I believe they have wanted for a really long time. It’s also building upon our elders in our communities, which is creating more beds in the Northwest Territories for long-term care.

The Member is absolutely right; this will create employment opportunities and we have to do it right. I and others share the belief that if we really want to have some continuity in those communities in that long-term care centre, we’ve got to train local people to do local work. We’ve already started. We’ve actually sent out advertisements to all the communities in the Sahtu outlining the personal support worker training that is going to be facilitated in the Sahtu, in Norman Wells in particular, but for residents from anywhere in the Sahtu who have an interest in coming to Norman Wells to be personal support workers. That training includes all sorts of different things. Medical terminology, health care, basic support, WHMIS, food security, food safety, everything they will need in order to provide the personal support to the residents in that long-term care facility. So we too are very, very excited and I look forward to seeing that roll out and get a lot of people in the Sahtu trained so that we can get a lot of people in the Sahtu employed, which I think is something that we all want to see.

The Member did talk an awful lot about addictions and treatment facilities and the Member did talk a little bit about the residential school survivors program and the difficulty that people in the Sahtu have identified as a result of that program slowly shutting down. I have asked the department to engage with the federal government to find out what, if any, transition plans they have with respect to rolling that program out over time. Those conversations, actually the feds have engaged us in those conversations and we are starting to have a little bit of conversation about what their transition plan is. Having said that, the individuals in the Northwest Territories who happen to be residential school survivors do have the ability to access all of the programs and services we offer here in the Northwest Territories and we do have a continuum

of support for individuals with addiction issues, for one, or mental health issues, as well, including the community counsellors and mental health addictions.

I do hear the Member’s concern about the continuity and the fact that we had some turnover in that area, and that is an area that is proving continual. As I mentioned to the Member, Mr. Blake, earlier today in question period, we’re going to have work with leadership across the territory to find ways to encourage young people to start pursuing these careers if we want to have long-term continuity, but a number of things need to be done.

Right now all of the residents in the Northwest Territories can take advantage of our addictions programs that we have contracted out in the South that are facility-based with a limitation, and the limitation is, and I know the Member is frustrated by this, and I’m frustrated, but we do have to understand that the facilities can say no to individuals with criminal records and they do from time to time. Depending on the criminal record a person has, they may not allow a particular individual to come into their facility. An example is somebody with sexual violence would probably not be accepted into a unisex facility. This can leave some of our residents out of the facility-based option, which is why we continue to work with community-based counseling.

We’ve got matrix programs expanding across the Northwest Territories that can offer treatment in communities. It’s still a 42-day program but it’s a community program and basically on more of, for lack of a better term, an outpatient basis as opposed to an in-patient. There are options, but I think it’s clear that we have to work with committee and we have to work with Members to explore this gap where there isn’t a treatment facility option because of the person’s history. It might mean that we find an on-the-land option. We need to explore this, and I’m happy to work with committee and talk with committee about these different options. But there are a number of things happening around addictions. We have a multitude of programs. It is a very wide spectrum. It’s following the recommendations from the Minister’s Forum almost exactly, and we are continuing to make progress in that area.

Today I did talk about the on-the-land programs which are moving in the right direction. As we continue to move forward with partners outside of the GNWT or Aboriginal governments, funding partners, hopefully, we will see huge opportunity to expand these. The beautiful thing about these programs is they are designed by the communities for the communities. The communities know what their needs are and if they need us to offer some clinical support, we can do that. If they want us to participate in that way, we can do that. But we’re

also providing them the money to make it happen. I wish it was double, triple, but it isn’t. That’s why we’re looking at philanthropic partners.

I think I got most of it.