Thank you, Mr. Chair. I do want to take this opportunity to thank the standing committee and their staff and all the residents across the Northwest Territories who contributed to the public hearings and contributed by different means to ensure we got this bill to be the best bill that we can. I do know that committee worked awfully hard and I appreciate their willingness to work with myself and the department in order to make amendments to the bill, that I believe, and I believe committee believes, to make this a stronger bill at the end of the day. I really appreciate the work and the time that they put into this.

To Mr. Moses’ point, also to Mr. Dolynny’s point, we do keep in mind addictions. If you look at the way the department is structured, we have a big division of mental health and addictions. We have the Mental Health and Addictions Action Plan. We understand the co-morbidity. We understand the requirement to collaborate and work together. I do remember when Caucus got together and talked about treatment options in the Northwest Territories utilizing existing facilities and following up on the Mental Health and Addictions Forum where we heard very clearly that people want options, they want a range of programming. We have followed through on that and we do have treatment facilities available for our residents. We also have on-the-land programs. We have enhanced or better trained community mental health and addictions counsellors at the community level who are ready to work with individuals who are struggling.

As I said to Mr. Dolynny, we are not perfect. We need to continue to find ways to strengthen our response to mental health and addictions, in particular addictions. One area that we haven’t brought across the finish line that would go to local or regional treatment facilities would be the mobile treatment option, where we can really utilize existing facilities on a rotational basis to provide community-based treatment in facilities that can move around so we can get different catchment areas, different groups of individuals who may not be willing to go to southern treatment.

I have already attempted to utilize, maybe, on-the-land programming or maybe community-based programming to look for something different. The key is to create as many options as are reasonable, affordable and functional, that actually are helping people.

I still don’t believe that developing another treatment facility in the Northwest Territories at this point, given our resources, given our realities, that we will ever be able to provide the incredible range of programs and specific programs that our four southern facilities are.

Another point is, and we heard this during the Mental Health and Addictions Forum, it is great if you build a treatment centre in Yellowknife. Fifty percent of the population is still going to have to travel and what cultural components are going to be built into it? If you put it into Hay River, like the last one, 85 to 90 percent of the population are still going to have to travel. If you are going to have to travel, are we not better off having high-quality programs that have the capacity to provide psychologists, psychiatrists, withdrawal management, medication management, constant counselling and, as Mr. Yakeleya often points out, dietary programming? They have the capacity to deliver these because they have clienteles of 90 to 100 people. We have 12. At any given time, we have 12 people in treatment. When we had a facility in the Northwest Territories, we had 12 people in treatment. When we have facilities in the South, we have 12 people in treatment on any given day. We have a utilization issue and a demand issue, but we are moving forward to provide a wide range of programs.

I would like the deputy to talk briefly about some of the work we are doing around trauma, to talk to Mr. Moses point about PTSD and trauma, so if we can go to Ms. DeLancey, that would be great.