Thank you. Mr. Speaker, I am tired. At times, I feel like the weight of the world is on my shoulders. Daily, I speak with residents of this territory, my constituents and others, about the declining state of their mental health and their struggles with accessing help from the system. These calls and messages start first thing in the morning and can go until I fall asleep at night. Last night was no exception.
Yesterday, I spent hours talking with a resident who works in addictions. Their client, a chronic alcoholic at the end of their rope and shaking, spoke those words every addictions counsellor wants to hear: I am ready to get help. Off the counsellor went, and they arrived at the emergency room to get help. After several hours, close to midnight, the client was admitted to emergency, but the nurse tells the counsellor, "We can't admit them to the hospital. There are no beds. They will be discharged at 6:30 a.m. I am sorry. The system is broken."
While COVID-19 has caused so much tragedy around the world, with people unable to spend time with their loved ones, and so much death, the indirect impacts of the disease are only amplifying the cracks in our fragile social network, cracks that are quickly becoming vast sinkholes. The consumption of alcohol and drugs has increased across the territory over the last year, and in the last month, the NWT lost access to three southern treatment centres due to COVID outbreaks. No one treatment centre fits all, so we had people who desperately needed an inpatient program and could not get it. Had we already established our own northern in-patient treatment program, this needless suffering would not have occurred.
To make matters worse, it is a requirement of some treatment programs that patients be medically detoxed before patients are admitted. As I discovered last night, patients are often left on their own to take this important, medically critical step; a step that, if not done correctly, can lead to seizures and death. Unless they can prove they are a threat to themselves and be admitted to the psychiatric ward, our vulnerable people are given an office number to receive non-medical supports, open during standard business hours, Monday to Friday.
When will this Minister acknowledge that we have a medical crisis at hand regarding addictions and mental health? How can we continue to encourage people to seek help only to leave them unsupported when they do? Every time the system fails our vulnerable population, it erodes any trust that may have been developed and only drives our residents deeper into the cycle of addiction that they cannot escape. I will have questions for the Minister of Health and Social Services at the appropriate time. Thank you.