This is page numbers 2895 - 2924 of the Hansard for the 18th Assembly, 2nd Session. The original version can be accessed on the Legislative Assembly's website or by contacting the Legislative Assembly Library. The word of the day was mandate.

Topics

Tom Beaulieu

Tom Beaulieu Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh

Mr. Speaker, changing gears just a bit. I’d like to ask the Minister if the department has been able to determine the cost of alcohol to the health system in the NWT.

Glen Abernethy

Glen Abernethy Great Slave

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, over the years there have been some suggestions on what the cost of alcohol is on the system. I think the Member has actually shared some numbers that he had with me. I can’t remember what those numbers are at this time, but I will go back and see what we can provide as far as what those numbers are. I might have to look at Hansard because I think the Member might have actually used those numbers at a previous date and once upon a time. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The Speaker

The Speaker Jackson Lafferty

Masi. Oral questions. Member for Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh.

Tom Beaulieu

Tom Beaulieu Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, early this month, the federal government committed to providing $204 million to support First Nations and Inuit communities to improve mental health services. I’d like to ask the Minister if his department is up to speed on that and if they are going to be accessing any of that money over and above what’s coming directly to the GNWT from the federal government. It seems to be a special type of an announcement aside from that. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Glen Abernethy

Glen Abernethy Great Slave

Mr. Speaker, any time the federal government announces a pot of money that’s available to support youth and mental health, addictions or frankly any pot the government identifies that might be available to the Northwest Territories, we as Cabinet, we as Members obviously look into that to figure out what is available to the Northwest Territories. I can’t speak to exactly what is available to us today or what mechanism there exists for us to actually obtain some of those funds. I do know that I think it was the year before the last the federal government did announce a $69 million pot to help combat addictions and suicide across this country. Of that amount, $2.5 million was allocated for the Northwest Territories. Half of that went to the IRC. The other half is flowing through the Government of the Northwest Territories to communities for on-the-land programming. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The Speaker

The Speaker Jackson Lafferty

Masi. Oral questions. Member for Frame Lake.

Kevin O'Reilly

Kevin O'Reilly Frame Lake

Merci, Monsieur le President. The Premier, I believe, was in Ottawa yesterday and maybe even this morning. I want to welcome him back. I’d also like to use this opportunity to get an update of what was discussed and any outcomes at the first Minister’s conference. Can the premier provide us with a brief summary of the main issues discussed and any outcomes? Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

The Speaker

The Speaker Jackson Lafferty

Masi. The Honourable Premier.

Bob McLeod

Bob McLeod Yellowknife South

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I had the opportunity to attend the swearing-in of the new Governor General of Canada and I was honoured to be invited. It was a very impressive ceremony and we have a very impressive new Governor General. I also attended a meeting of the consult of federal Premiers and attended a First Ministers' Meeting hosted by the Prime Minister of Canada with the three national Indigenous government leaders and the Premiers of all the provinces and territories. Then we moved into a First Ministers' Meeting with just the Prime Minister and the premiers. The agenda for the first Ministers is obviously set by the Prime Minister. We had briefings on by the governor of the bank of Canada on the state of the economy and also by his statistician who went into more detail. We had an update on NAFTA negotiations. We had an update on small business tax, an initiative of the federal government. We also discussed cannabis and then we had a very short period left for a round table discussion. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Kevin O'Reilly

Kevin O'Reilly Frame Lake

I want to thank the Premier for that list of what he did in Ottawa. It was very thorough and I appreciate that very much. I guess I’m most interested in the First Ministers' conference. Can the Premier tell us as he did mention that cannabis was on the list of topics discussed. I’m wondering if carbon pricing was also discussed. Can he tell us what sort of positions were put forward and whether there was any resolution of these issues at the First Ministers’ conference.

Bob McLeod

Bob McLeod Yellowknife South

As I said, the agenda is set by the Prime Minister so I took some representation to have cannabis added to the agenda by the consult of federation. Carbon pricing was not discussed. It was not on the agenda. The discussion on cannabis mainly followed up on the consult of federation meetings that we had earlier in the year in Edmonton where the Premiers expressed concern about the fact that a lot of work still had to be done in five key areas with regards to implementation of the cannabis legislation.

We were reminded once again that there were still some concerns about the lack of time that June/July of 2018 is too soon and that we don’t have enough time to get properly ready. The prime Minister indicated that this was not an evented time. It was a progress over time where we’re looking to protect our youth and our children from the bad effects of drugs. Also, we’re trying to make sure that the bad guys didn’t get to keep all of the money. The longer we waited to implement, more money goes to the bad guys. We had a very good briefing by the parliamentary secretary. He talked quite a bit about enforcement of impaired driving or cannabis impaired driving and how that was going to work. He talked a lot about education. We also talked about the retail methods that would be used. I raised the matter of we have dry communities in the Northwest Territories and obviously to have communities where we don’t have cannabis would go against the initiative of legalizing cannabis.

The parliamentary secretary did advise that our member of parliament has invited him to visit the North and he would be visiting at some point in the near future. I think that would be very helpful. There’s still a lot of concern about licensing of retail or distribution methods and also the production of cannabis is still felt by the Premiers in a lot of the provinces that as soon as cannabis is legalized, there’s not enough production available to meet the demand. That was the gist of the discussions, Mr. Speaker.

Kevin O'Reilly

Kevin O'Reilly Frame Lake

Merci, Monsieur le President. I want to thank the Premier for his very thorough answer. I very much appreciate getting the information. Can the Premier tell us whether he had any side meetings with Northern territories Premiers, and generally what might have been discussed, and any outcomes?

Bob McLeod

Bob McLeod Yellowknife South

We attempted to organize the meeting with the three northern Premiers because historically, we work to have a united position on a lot of these issues. Also, we are doing work on a pan-territorial sustainable development vision which we are trying to do in conjunction with the development of a federal arctic policy framework, but we were not able to get the three northern Premiers together because it was just too short a period of time, and everybody was arriving at different times.

The Speaker

The Speaker Jackson Lafferty

Masi. Oral questions. Member for Frame Lake.

Kevin O'Reilly

Kevin O'Reilly Frame Lake

Once again, I would like to thank the Premier for that information. I really do appreciate getting this information from the Premier, and I know he is just fresh off the plane. Again, I sincerely thank him for this. I know that other Ministers also go to federal-provincial-territorial meetings. I am just wondering, this sort of reporting back would be really helpful, at least for myself and probably other Members on this side of the House. Can the Premier find a way to more systematically get back to Regular Members about what happens at federal-provincial-territorial meetings like the First Ministers' Conference?

Bob McLeod

Bob McLeod Yellowknife South

In practice, generally, FPT meetings and even the council or federation meetings, generally, we share whatever communiques or decision documents that are released with the standing committees and the Members, and we are prepared to continue to do that. In this case, the First Ministers' meeting, there was no communique or documents that were issued, so I would be prepared to brief the committee if we can find the time to do so. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The Speaker

The Speaker Jackson Lafferty

Masi. Oral questions. Member for Yellowknife Centre.

Julie Green

Julie Green Yellowknife Centre

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my questions are for the Minister of Health and Social Services. He appeared at the Standing Committee on Social Development last winter to talk about the 2015-2016 audit of Child and Family Services. He provided as a follow-up, a report on the audit, but not the audit themselves. Why wasn't the audit given to us in the original form? Thank you.

The Speaker

The Speaker Jackson Lafferty

Minister of Health and Social Services.

Glen Abernethy

Glen Abernethy Great Slave

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, audits prepared by the Department of Health and Social Services around Child and Family Services, are never made public or shared with committee as a result of the confidential nature of much of the detail and information contained within. When I met with committee in January 2017 when we discussed the audit, I indicated that although we had put in a new audit process as a result of recommendations from the Auditor General of Canada and as part of our building stronger families, an audit was done that looked at qualitative and quantitative data, and a new tool was developed by the Department of Health and Social Services for this process including a new database.

On reviewing the audit results, or rather the audit report, unfortunately, it became clear that the quantitative data collected was not at all reliable. This was as a result of a number of reasons including the staff were not particularly familiar with the new database that was created, and because the standards were constantly changing during that year the audit results were done, and they were not linked to consistent standards. It was a problem. It was unfortunate. It was frustrating for both myself and for the Members. I did commit at that time to pulling together a summary of the results that we had at the time, recognizing that the quantitative data was not as reliable as we had hoped for, but there was qualitative information gathered at the same time which did provide some useful insight. We provided a summary to committee. That document once again is not made public as a result of the confidential nature of some of the data within.

I have made a commitment that we are going to provide summary documents to committee in confidence moving forward. In 2016-2017, we have put in a new audit process that has been tested and retested to make sure that it is actually going to give us the data that we need in order to make informed decisions and provide quality reports which will lead to a quality summary that will be shared with Regular Members.

Julie Green

Julie Green Yellowknife Centre

Thank you for that answer. What kind of reports, audit reports were shared with regional authorities in the 2015-2016 audit?

Glen Abernethy

Glen Abernethy Great Slave

Originally, prior to the changes in 2015-2016, the audits were done with regional authorities, were done by a senior auditing team within the department, and were unfortunately conducted kind of on an irregular basis, and I think this is one of the things that the Auditor General rightfully, hammered the Department of Health and Social Services on, that this was not done in a regular way. This was not done regularly. In the past, the individual reports were shared with the authority so that recommendations for improvements within could be made. We want to be able to continue to do those types of things, provide information to regional operations of the new territorial authority so that they can make improvements and provide high quality child and family services. With our new audit tool, we believe we have a system that will allow us to do both the qualitative and quantitative analysis so that we can continue to make recommendations at a local delivery level for the high quality provision of child and family services, recognizing that today, we are moving in a new direction of child and family services. Building stronger families is the new way of doing business. It is different than it has done before, and we are looking at supporting families rather than apprehending children.

Julie Green

Julie Green Yellowknife Centre

There is no question that this is the right direction to go. Apprehending children is the last resort. With respect to the 2015-2016 audit of Child and Family Services, the former CFS advisor, Andy Langford, is quoted as saying, "Taken at face value, our measures of compliance are arguably worse than they were three years ago when the auditor general completed his audit." This is not a comforting result. Could the Minister tell us how the department responded to this observation?

Glen Abernethy

Glen Abernethy Great Slave

This goes to the fact that we have put in a new system for actually collecting data, and we have tested it rigorously to ensure that the data collection is something that is both useful and practical, and it will give us information we need to make informed decisions moving forward. Mr. Speaker, I certainly would like to see a copy of the information the Member is making reference to, and put it in context with respect to where that letter was sent to, who, and what was it answering as opposed to making assumptions in this House on exactly what the conversation before and after was.

The Speaker

The Speaker Jackson Lafferty

Masi. Oral questions. Member for Yellowknife Centre.