Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to recognize a couple of the FOXY peer leaders in the gallery today: Makenzie Zouboules, Coco Paulette and Brianna Shae. Thank you all for the amazing work you’ve done in the Northwest Territories. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Mr. Moses.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I too would like to welcome Chief Ernest Betsina to the House as well as Mayor Ray Ruben. I hope you enjoy the proceedings. Welcome to the House.

I’d also like to welcome the FOXY peer leaders. That is a great program and one that I fully support. That you for all the hard work that you’re doing. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Moses. Welcome everybody here in the public gallery. Thank you for taking in our proceedings today.

Item 6, acknowledgements. Item 7, oral questions. Member for Mackenzie Delta, Mr. Blake.

Thank you, Mr. Blake. The Minister of Justice, Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The response time would be the amount of time it takes to get the call through the centre and get an

officer dispatched to the community of Tsiigehtchic, which of course, as the Member knows, is a fair distance from the community of Fort McPherson. But, as soon as possible. As soon as they can respond to the concern in Tsiigehtchic, they’d be there. Thank you.

At times it takes anywhere from two hours to 24 hours for response calls, just so the Minister has that information.

I’d like to ask the Minister to describe the benefits of having a permanent police detachment in those communities lucky enough to have them.

When deciding if it’s appropriate to invest the significant amount of funding – and I mentioned in the House last week that it’s between seven and 11 million dollars for a stand-alone RCMP detachment – some of the things that we must take into consideration are population, crime rates, workload of members, remoteness, calls for service historically, financial and human resources, infrastructure, types of calls for service, access to the community via all-weather road, winter roads, weather variability and also funding and priorities. So, there’s a number of factors that go into whether or not a detachment would be constructed in a community. Thank you.

That wasn’t the question. The question was to describe the benefits of having a detachment in those communities, but I’ll let the Minister answer that again. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The benefits of having a detachment would be obvious. Calls would come in and members would be located in the community that has a detachment, so response times would be that much quicker. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Blake.

Will the Minister meet with the community leaders in Tsiigehtchic to discuss ways to build up a grassroots, community-based policing presence? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

As Members know, I have a track record of wanting to get into communities and discuss with community leaders how best to police communities. We’ve got community policing plans that we’ve got in place across the territory. We’re also moving forward with community safety plans. At the earliest opportunity I’d be happy to accompany the Member and also the RCMP to visit the community of Tsiigehtchic, to sit down with the community leaders and the MLA to discuss how we can move forward. I know the issue that we had last week is also an issue that we want to see overcome with the housing and having members overnight in the community of Tsiigehtchic. So yes, the answer to the Member’s question is: at the earliest opportunity. If there is a community tour we

can get into Tsiigehtchic, the sooner the better. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Member for Range Lake, Mr. Dolynny.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Given the recent scathing report of the Auditor General of Canada and work done in the 16th Assembly on

child and family services, and with over 100 combined recommendations between these two initiatives, we know the Minister and his department have their work cut out for them. Therefore, it’s important that we keep tabs on where this is going and their progress. My questions today are for the Minister of Health and Social Services.

Following the Office of the Auditor General of Canada Report on Child and Family Services, the Minister indicated his intention of hiring two assistant directors, one for child and family services, a second for mental health and addictions.

Can the Minister indicate if this is indeed complete and in place? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. Minister of Health, Mr. Abernethy.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We have one of those individuals in place. We have been recruiting for the other one without any success at this point, but I will certainly keep the Members informed as to when we’re finally able to successfully fill that position. Thank you.

So, we’re at 50 percent on that question.

According to the department’s Building Stronger Families Action Plan, in response to the OAG report, it states on page 7 that a forum of directors of social programs will be responsible for implementation.

Can the Minister indicate why are not the assistant directors, in conjunction with the director, responsible for implementing the action plan? Why the watered down approach in response to such a serious issue? Thank you.

It’s hardly a watered down approach. The territorial director is involved in that working group as well as the directors of social services and all the authorities in the Northwest Territories. They meet on a regular basis – monthly at this point – to ensure that this progress, this initiative is rolled out as the timelines have outlined.

Mr. Speaker, on page 7 of the same action plan, the department’s senior officials are described as “risk adverse, where out of sight

out of mind defines the optimal level when it comes to child protection services.”

Can the Minister inform the House, does this set the stage for further failures when there appears in a department’s own words a culture of complacency among its top officials? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, it doesn’t seem to be in the right order here. That was something that was occurring. That’s one of the main reasons we’re doing a fundamental change in how we provide child and family services in the Northwest Territories. According to the Auditor General, there wasn’t enough accountability, so we actually made all the CEOs in all the authorities associate directors under the legislation, which has brought this to the forefront and made it a priority in every authority.

To the Member’s point, this is a priority; it is being dealt with; we are moving forward. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Short, final supplementary, Mr. Dolynny.

Mr. Speaker, I do appreciate the Minister’s comments here, but it appears that we’re still moving very slowly on this serious issue.

We can only assume that hiring the Child Welfare League to help the GNWT with the action plan and the numerous and new enhanced activities that we’ve heard and been proposed will cost considerable money. Yet it appears that no new additional resources have been used or put forth in the budget, which suggests failure.

Can the Minister indicate how realistic is it that his department is able to accomplish all this with no new investment? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.