Thank you, Madam Chair. The title "What will we do" is "Strengthen community counselling services." Waitlists are regarding that. You can't reduce the wait times for access unless we have other options to do it. This is one that we do have statistics, so we do have a percentage that we want to lower it by, hopefully. We can't lower that until we have stronger peer support groups, until we have managed alcohol groups, all those things that are being implemented before will help us with the wait times. That is why it is at the end. It is because we need all of the other programs and support to support people from actually relapsing or people getting into hard uses of alcohol and drugs. All of those things have to be in place first. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Premier. Member for Kam Lake.

Thank you, Madam Chair. My last question today, or not today, for this page has to do with actually under the first one. During election month, we heard a lot of talk about on-the-land addictions recovery and mental health, wellness options. We also heard yourself, am I allowed to say the Chair, talk about the experience you had at the Arctic Wellness Foundation out by the multiplex in a Member's Statement very recently. I am a little worried that on-the-land, to me it looks slightly less large than I would like to see it. I am just wondering if you are comfortable speaking about where Cabinet would like to go with on-the-land options for people both in Yellowknife, but then also, more importantly, in our communities? Thank you.

Thank you, Member for Kam Lake. Madam Premier.

Thank you, Madam Chair. The difficulty when you are dealing with alcohol and drug use is: the GNWT alone can't solve this issue. We need a community as a whole to be able to address this. We do support things like in Yellowknife, in our capital, the wellness camp behind the arena there, those are good things, but we also, in the smaller communities, we need to engage. Our whole Cabinet is on that. We need to engage with Indigenous governments, and they have their own traditional methods of healing people. It is very disrespectful for us not to take that into consideration. We haven't defined what they would look like more so. We have defined that we need to work with Indigenous governments. It is appropriate. They know their people. They know their communities. They will tell us what they need. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Premier. Member for Yellowknife Centre.

Thank you, Madam Chair. In the last Assembly, the social development committee spent quite a bit of time on the issue of aftercare for people returning from treatment in the south. One of the things that we grappled with, and I don't see here but is an important part, is how to measure success. There are people, as you know, go and start treatment and don't complete it. There are people who go and complete treatment and stay sober for the rest of their lives, and there is everything in between. Do you have some thoughts about how to evaluate the results of improving the services for aftercare for people who have addictions treatment? Thank you.

Thank you, Member for Yellowknife Centre. Madam Premier.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Again, measuring success is really an objective kind of philosophy. For a young child, perhaps coming from a family of parents who drink frequently, success was one day sober. For other people, it might be longer. What we have done, the number of individuals requiring a return to treatment is reduced, and the length of time between treatment is increased are the ways that we will measure. I do want to qualify that success may not mean that less people, more time before rehab treatment. Again, those things might not be the success. I think it is an individual family measurement of success. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Premier. Member for Yellowknife Centre.

Thank you. I think that is an interesting philosophical discussion about what success is in this case. One possibility is: who goes to treatment, and have they been before? I think there are some more nuanced questions that are available which may have to be learned through interviewing people. That is, they consent to being interviewed, and they talk about what kind of triggers led them to relapse or what kind of services were very helpful and so on. I think this is an area that could really use a special focus on evaluation and monitoring so that we are clear that for all the services that we now provide and want to provide in the future, that they are providing the best amount of help possible for those individuals. My next question has to do with the nine transitional housing units. I am not clear where nine comes from. Why nine and not 99? Thank you.

Thank you, Member for Yellowknife Centre. Madam Premier.

Thank you, Madam Chair. The nine comes from just trying to be reasonable about what we feel that we can accomplish in the life of this Assembly. When we first put out distance learning, which wasn't during my term but I did take part in it, they were wise in that they said they would do five a year. That way, they were able to keep that commitment. This year, you will see that there will be 20. If we would have said 99, we wouldn't have made it. Start with nine. Each year, we'll try to improve. If we break this, this is not our bible. This does not mean that we only do nine, and in two years, that we won't look at more. This is our minimum. Hopefully, minimum. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Premier. Member for Yellowknife Centre.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I can see potential, for example, to having, let's say, the sale of Arnica goes through to the Yellowknife Women's Society of having a number of spaces available there to people returning from treatment. That would be a start on stabilizing people who are returning from treatment. What we hear and what you know from your own work life is that, when people return from treatment and they go back to couch surfing, that they are more likely than not to relapse because they don't really have the positive reinforcement for the changes they are trying to make. My last question in this area has to do with the alcohol strategy. How does that fit within this mandate area? Is it something that will pull these different pieces together, or is it something that is separate? Thank you.

Thank you, Member for Yellowknife Centre. Madam Premier.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Two things: one, like I said earlier, we can't do this alone, so we are open to partnerships. If something like the Arnica Inn came and they were offering something or an Indigenous government, we would be open to partner with that, so we might do it. The other thing to manage alcohol is kind of on its own. It kind of combines, and yet it is on its own. I am going to try to be politically correct because I respect the people that I spent 20 years working with, is that there are people, Madam Chair, that the level of addiction and the damage that has happened is so astute, that to ask them to go from using constantly from their wake up until they go to bed, to actually go to rehab, you are looking at medical problems, then. What's DT's called? The withdrawal from it is going to be huge. Managed alcohol has been utilized in many different jurisdictions. It is being shown to work.

I think in the last Assembly, I was fortunate to go with the Minister of Health. We went down to a program, I believe it was in Toronto. It could have been a different city. They took us there. People that were chronic users were finding success with that. They had to start. They started with the managed alcohol, and then because it was monitored, they eventually got to a place where they could use less. It is part of the answer. It is not the whole answer. You can't put one treatment for every person. We have to stop doing that. That is what people have done all through centuries. Best practice says you don't make people fit models; you make models fit people. Use what works for all the people that you see. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Premier. Member for Yellowknife Centre.

Thank you. I have also done some reading on managed alcohol programming. I think that it benefits the individuals, and it also benefits the community. There is a lot of criminality that goes with feeding addictions that would be addressed by a managed alcohol program. My last comment in that area is that I realized from the amount of time that I have spent with the people who are with chronic addictions is that not everyone wants to be sober. There are people who are perfectly content to not be sober for the rest of their lives. Obviously, all of this needs to be driven by individuals who want change, and we help them to obtain that change. I think we also have to recognize that we have people who have alcoholism as a chronic health issue, not as a moral failing, but as a health issue. We need to take care of them until the end of their lives, and managed alcohol may be one dimension of that. Thank you.

Thank you, Member for Yellowknife Centre. Madam Premier.

Absolutely. I couldn't say it better than the Member said it herself. The managed alcohol program isn't only about getting people off of addictions. It is about harm reduction. The amount of people I have seen in my career that have done horrible things that I won't speak about in this House to actually be able to get a $5 bottle of beer are horrible stories that I have heard. These people will actually benefit from this program. They may, but they don't have to resort to those methods to feed their addiction. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Premier. Member for Yellowknife Centre.

Nothing further. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Member for Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh.