The 18th Legislative Assembly mandate calls for actions to foster community wellness and safety; actions that will enhance the lives of Northwest Territories residents and over the longer term reduce the need for some social programs. The 2017-18 budget proposes to deliver almost $19 million in new funding that directly supports actions to improve the health of our communities.

We are proposing to support actions to address homelessness in Yellowknife that were outlined in last October’s Yellowknife Homelessness Road Map Action Plan, with $230,000 to extend the hours that the Yellowknife Day Shelter is open from eight to twelve hours per day and $520,000 to help offset the costs of creating a sobering centre in Yellowknife. Plans are already underway for the program design for the sobering centre based on the goal to operate up to 14 hours a day every day with separate male and female areas, a meal each evening, and capacity for 30 to 40 people.

We take our responsibility to meet the most fundamental and primary needs of our most vulnerable residents for shelter seriously. This budget proposes adding $103,000 in emergency shelter funding to help shelter providers address increased demand to temporarily house people in need and to address increased rent and food costs. A further $294,000 is proposed in this budget to offset increased costs to support operations at the Charlotte Vehus, Billy Moore, and Inuvik Community Group Homes. In keeping with the government’s priority to take action on the crisis of family violence, $120,000 is included to offset increased operating costs at family violence shelters across the Northwest Territories.

With the passage of this budget, we will provide $616,000 in one-time funding to implement a territorial-wide 911 service. This funding will allow for a basic 911 service with a single public safety answering point that will give Northwest Territories residents improved emergency response to available medical, fire protection and police services in all communities.

We need medical travel to provide access to medical services for all Northwest Territories residents. Both the need for medical travel and the costs to provide this travel continue to increase annually. As a result, this budget proposes to add $6.4 million to address cost pressures in the medical travel budget. Some of the shortfall relates to increased air ambulance costs that include improvements to service, safety and quality. New initiatives to modernize the Medical Travel Policy and investments in overall health program improvements should help reduce the use of medical travel and improve services to remote communities while at the same time containing costs.

We have a growing number of Northwest Territories residents with a diverse range of special needs and these residents are better placed in southern facilities where they can receive specialized treatment for severe and difficult to treat conditions that require clinical, residential, and educational programming services that are beyond the financial ability of the GNWT to provide. This budget provides an additional $3.2 million to address the shortfall in funding this vital program and preserve the quality of life for these individuals, many of whom will remain in care for the remainder of their lives.

The cost to deliver critical health services to NWT residents continues to increase. This budget proposes an additional $3.3 million to address the operating costs of new health centres in Hay River and Norman Wells, increased costs of medical supplies, and increased security needs at Stanton Territorial Hospital. In keeping with the government's priority of ensuring support is in place for seniors who can no longer live in their homes, we are proposing $877,000 for operating costs associated with the expansion of long-term care at the Jimmy Erasmus Seniors Home in Behchoko and $778,000 in funding to maintain long term care beds at the H.H. Williams Hospital until the expansion of Woodland Manor is completed.

There is $1.6 million included in this budget to support the transition of all health and social services authorities to the government's Technology Service Centre. This transition is necessary to implement shared services systems such as the territorial electronic medical records, which will not only improve care for residents but will allow improved tracking and analysis of health data and expenditures for evidence-based decision-making.

We are proposing to inject $1.5 million for justice activities. This includes the GNWT's share of the RCMP costs of $429,000 to operate an Internet Child Exploitation Unit to address the cost pressures caused by increased investigations of NWT residents' involvement in internet child pornography; $385,000 to increase the number of relief positions needed because of increased mandatory training hours for the Emergency Response Team; $182,000 for cell and interview room recording systems upgrades to maintain safety and security for the RCMP, the public, and offenders; and $78,000 for RCMP isolated post allowances. This funding also provides $224,000 to add two sheriff officers to address the increasing workload demand including increased vehicle seizures and increased provision of security coverage for Justice of the Peace Court.

In co-operation with the federal government, we are continuing to fund the Framework for Enhancing Victim Services Agreement with $749,000 in ongoing funding, starting in this budget. This funding will help the Community Justice Program support communities to develop and implement sustainable local justice programming in the areas of restorative justice, victim services, community policing, and crime prevention.