Thank you, Mr. Chair. I certainly think today is a fantastic day that we are now at this stage that we are talking about the bill becoming a reality. It wasn’t that long ago that the Mental Health Act was being looked at as strong, maybe, but we’re not sure, and possibly, maybe next term. So a lot of things had to come to bear to bring an introduction into this ring and certainly an amazing amount of work has brought it forth here.

I certainly want to begin by stressing how appreciative I am of the department to bring this forward and for the Minister to bring this forward and certainly for the committee to do the work that was required to go through this in order to have a bill here today. You can tell how important the bill was. I have heard people speak about the Mental Health Act for years and I know, from my own experience of dealing with headaches created with the old act, I can tell you first hand I have seen it as a frustrating piece of legislation and I certainly look forward to the implementation of the new act.

You can also tell how serious the standing committee took it. As I understand it, there is, and I’m going to use the very specific terminology of a whack. There is a whack of amendments, and they put a lot of heart and soul and passion into their work that they’ve done. I want to thank them for that. It’s not easy work sitting on a committee, just like the saying it’s not easy being green. But committee work is very important. Many hours of briefings, details, you go through it over and over again, and that work, it needs to be stressed how important it is, and again, I give committee a pat on the back.

The issues I want to raise very quickly are that I’ve sat with constituents in meetings with their psychiatrist talking about their loved ones. I’ve been to discussions at families’ houses about the strain and stress about mental health problems in the Northwest Territories, and I honestly find it heart wrenching. I mean there is no humor in this. To me it seems almost like one of the most complicated issues, and in my experience there are certain issues you get in this House you just want to stay away from because you just know it’s going to be, you know, it’s not a 10 minute sit and listen; it’s not here’s an hour of your time all wrapped up. I’m serious. These are tough issues to deal with and there’s no way of sort of just saying do you want to hurry up? I want to go a movie tonight or something. No, you have to sit and listen and understand and appreciate from the people’s perspective.

Hearing people talk about either their children or their spouses or their parents, I mean, it is absolutely a very deeply emotional experience, especially even when they’re talking about themselves and how challenging it is.

One of the things I’ve found, not just with the act, and I’m going to stray only for a moment here, is the fact that so much work still needs to be done on the public education aspect of mental health and for those who want to seek it feel paralyzed, parents are paralyzed, loved ones are paralyzed because of either the stigma that is created by them or the challenge and fear of getting involved or feeling that the system itself can’t help them or won’t help them. Sitting at people’s houses, a family’s house, or sitting even at the hospital talking to the folks who have been going through these challenges, I can’t say it enough, and I’ll probably say it a few more times as I go on, but it is a very emotional experience and sometimes just watching people feel helpless is just such a terrible feeling.

I want to point out, and a couple of my colleagues have mentioned it. I heard Mr. Dolynny mention it, and I think Mr. Moses mentioned it, and probably others have mentioned about how mental health seems to go hand in hand with addictions and the literature supports that. I’ve watched people who have mental health problems also lean into the addictions world. Let us not assume that that’s an easy experience for those who watch.

The big thing about this one, of course, like anything, is we can create the best piece of legislation, we could have a million pages of clauses talking about this and certainly about that. So, it doesn’t matter if it’s one page or a million pages, it really comes down to how it’s going to be implemented and certainly how it’s going to be supported.

The implementation and support is certainly, if I’d say, just as important as the time it took to draft the concepts. Of course, you get drafting from speaking to the professionals and their experience in and around the system, so I certainly look forward to how it’s going to be implemented and see where the supports are going to be there. It’s funny, sometimes we talk about supports as brick and mortar and sometimes it’s just a phone call, so it’s going to be an array of things to see this come to life.

My last experience in helping a family was watching someone who had a loved one who self-medicated. They would seek help. They would get help. They would be fine. Then they would not medicate because, well, heck, they didn’t need it they said, and the family struggled knowing that there was no power for the psychiatrist to implement an order to say if you don’t take your medication, we’re going to make you. The destructive behaviour that they had done when they’d get off their medication was terrible. People were fearful. When they were back on their meds, they knew that it was a problem. But like I said, mental health goes hand in hand with addictions and they’d get into other trouble and not just addiction, they get into other types of criminal behaviour. I think really what we see is good people who just needed help and support.

I just don’t know what to say enough in the sense of how excited I am that we are here to this day and I can honestly say I never ever remember getting a phone call when someone had a mental health problem and I thought, goodness, I can’t wait to hear what’s going to happen, where this conversation’s going. I can tell you, every single time I’ve had a call on this, I know it’s going to be a struggle.

I know I’m not telling anyone anything new here and I can just say that I certainly know that I hope this prepares us for the challenge ahead. I mean, it is a new act. It’s like preparing for the knowns, in other words the known problem, but sometimes that’s easier than preparing for the unknowns. What are we going to be prepared for? What is the act going to facilitate and be flexible enough to address things that come along? That’s the problem. You try to predict where this challenge, the mental health issue, is going and how to be prepared for it. So, I don’t have a particular question. My last statement wasn’t necessarily a question, more an anecdote about making sure we’re ready.

I am just going to wrap up by saying that, you know, I’m so happy we’re here. I fully support this, support the implementation of this. I’ve witnessed it firsthand. I definitely believe education needs to be done. I know this is a department that represents health, not the Department of Education which is another Minister, another department, another budget. But you know, we have to ask ourselves, what can we do? I mean, if I may liken it in the way that we’ve had other problems in the world and social sort of understanding and realization has caused us to rise up and meet the occasion as required. But will the government eventually find a way to engage its citizenry in a way that we all rise up and all say that no one should ever be ashamed of having a mental health challenge and we should see so many hands up that say we’re going to help you through this challenge. I look forward to that day. I know this act isn’t going to do that and I’m under no foolish sort of delusion that it’s going to be easy to get there some day, but I just know that as we, as a society, have risen up and said certain behaviours are not correct on other areas, let us find a way to rise up on this one and be there to help when you need help. Thank you.