Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’d like to welcome the department and the Minister here today. As this has been a very long and a very swift journey to have this bill before the House, I do want to commend the Minister and his department for getting this bill near the end of our term and I want to thank the department for assisting committee as we went from community to community to discuss the intricacies of this bill.

I guess, first and foremost – and some of this stuff may sound familiar to the department here – as I said in the clause-by-clause review, I believe what we have before is a very action-rich and a very resource-poor bill before us and what I mean by that is the fact that we’ve got a lot of new actions in order to deal with mental illness in the Northwest Territories, many of those which I support as a Member who has had the pleasure of going literally line-by-line and community-by-community to make that evaluation.

Where I feel that it is resource poor, although we have heard some indications that there will be some money invested in this, that money will pale in comparison to what really is needed to make this bill fully and truly effective. I want to just be cautious as we go through this bill and hopefully approve it here today, that the department has a big undertaking to try to get the much-needed resources. The Minister has his colleagues sitting across from us here; we have the Finance Minister here. You’re going to have to find some money, Mr. Minister, otherwise this bill won’t be as effective as we may think it is and it’s going to require some infrastructure, it’s going to require some human resources and it’s going to require a lot of community involvement.

So I do challenge the Minister to do the necessary lobbying. I know we’re going to be finishing up session here in a day or so. I know the Minister acts in his capacity up until the next Assembly is sworn in. So I’m hoping that during that period of time that we’re able to put the tools together to kind of put the necessary action items together to make sure that, again, if this bill goes through, that we’re going to have to start on that venture.

Things that I’ve noticed as we went through this act and taking this act on the road and trying to dabble in a little bit into my own medical background as a pharmacist is that – and I’m just going to say something here – according to statistics from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, at least 20 percent of people with mental illness also have a substance abuse problem. So there’s a clear correlation, and I’ll explain more about where this number comes from and what it means to this act, but there’s a clear indication as we investigate more and more in Canada that there is a commonality between addictions and mental health. Again, when you look at the overall aspect of this act, addictions are relatively silent. I think there’s going to be a bit of a wall there when we start rolling this out, and I’ll tell you that in a second.

What we’re seeing is that with the new paradigm shift in treatment is integrating the treatment of both mental health and addiction as being treated together. A lot of the studies coming out now that have some of the best outcomes when we treat mental health and addictions as one. Now, where this puts the residents of the Northwest Territories in a bit of a predicament is that our addictions treatment facilities are down south and that’s going be causing a problem and you heard time and time again and even some of the recommendations is the fact that we strongly encourage addictions treatment programs need to come back to home row.

I know the Minister is very adamant that through cost efficiencies and trying to save money, economies of scale, that it’s not possible. But the health care system is saying we need to work together with addictions, we have to find ways to find solutions. There are many studies here. There are a number of studies I can provide to the Minister and the department later to back up the information that I’m talking about, but as the Minister always says, these are silos and there are silos now with mental health and addiction service across Canada.

Many organizations, many jurisdictions, many provinces have seen that and, again, this act is silent on that. The growing trend right now in the provinces is integrated diagnosis and treatment initiatives. These are going hand in hand, and again, many of the new paradigms in terms of treatment are showing that these integrated diagnosis treatment programs are starting to roll out across the provinces and even at a provincial level – I’ll pick Alberta, for example – addiction counsellors are being cross-trained to do mental health work and mental health counsellors are being cross-trained to do addiction work. So it’s happening in other provinces. In fact, it’s gone even further that even a province like Ontario, that Minister of Health made an integrating mental health and addictions services as one of his four goals in the strategic 10-year plan. So they’ve noticed the fact that this is important to them as well. I know we’re not Ontario, but we need to look at what’s leading the charge across Canada when it comes to the flexibility of treatment options and integrated services.

So I’ll leave it at that particular point, Mr. Chair, and again, because this act is relatively silent on addictions, I just wanted to point out some of the recent trends that we’re seeing across Canada and some of the silence that we have pursuant to this act.

One of the last things I want to talk about is the fact that, yes, there is a triggering mechanism of a five-year review of this act, and I’m very thankful that it is. I think it was well received across the communities and I applaud the government for including it. Not every legislation has a triggering clause and I’m glad we have one in this one. So, kudos to the department for allowing that to happen. However, as I’ve said before in committee, in public settings, I don’t think we need to wait for that five-year review before we initiate that trigger. I think we’re going to slowly find out, once this act and if this act comes online, that we’re going to probably have to do some massaging of this act sooner than later and we all know how the speed of government happens sometimes and I don’t want to fall victim to that trend. We waited over 30 years for this to happen, so let’s not become victims of our own demise.

Let’s make sure that we are proactive by design and I strongly encourage the department to look at it early on in the life of the 18th once this thing comes online. I would include even up to a year, up to two years after we go live with this that it comes up for formal review and a full public consultation process. Hopefully by then the stuff I talked about earlier with integration of addictions might be able to be incorporated with mental health within the paradigms of one act.

I will conclude saying thank you very much for allowing me to speak and I do want to thank my colleagues. This was the last act that we had the pleasure of travelling together. You get to know your fellow counterparts quite intimately, I guess, sometimes when you’re doing road community travel. But this is a great group from the Social Programs committee. They’re enriched with plenty of rigor and I just want to say, for the record, it was a pleasure working with them and we’ve got a great chair that leads us down that path. Thank you.