Yes, thank you, Madam Chair. And I appreciate the question. I feel like we're a long way from paying midwifes to be on call simply because we have jobs that we need to fill, and the midwifes are -- are, you know, in short supply at this point. They're also -- as you probably know, the positions we're advertising now are to support communities in their home births. So what I'm struggling with is whether we would have enough staff to provide an on-call service saying that, you know, midwives can't work 24 hours a day. So that to me would be a new direction in this budget and would need to be incorporated into the business planning process. Thank you.

Thank you. Member for Monfwi.

Thank you. I'm not too sure if it's in this area but it's on grants and contribution transfers.

I know that ECE, they set up a scholarship program to attract early learning childcare workers. And in the NWT, we know that speech and language is very important, especially in the small communities where we're lacking lot of services. Speech and language is one of the most important -- it's important for lot of us in our community because we have young kids. As I was saying before, we have little kids that are entering JK with no language skills, and we lack those services in the communities.

So I was just wondering why health and social services are not setting up scholarship programs to attract communities -- small communities' youth to pursue a career in speech and language area. Why -- I would like to see something like that set up by health and social services because -- so that way we don't have to rely on southern coming up or we don't have to rely on Yellowknife and/or if there's something that Yellowknife set up or headquarters, then they're always -- there's some barriers, and it's -- because one of the things that they always do -- even like they did with the CYCC program, they said you got to have a master's program, you know, or a doctorate program to deliver some of the programs. But lot of these young people in our communities, they know, and they know the language; they know the culture; they know the families. So I think having a program for young people to pursue, especially to work with young people from their community, this -- the scholarship will -- it would be nice if there's a scholarship set up to help pursue a career will be greatly appreciate by many community members. Thank you.

Thank you. Minister of Health and Social Services.

Yes, thank you, Member from Monfwi. You might recall that I had a conversation with Member for Yellowknife North yesterday about speech language pathology. We're short of speech language pathologists. And so I think it makes sense for us to look at how to bring more people into that field wherever they're from. We're having trouble recruiting them. And so while our professional development funds and bursaries are not specific to specific services like speech language pathology, that is what the -- those funds are there to support. And so we would like to be able to attract people to those professions and provide them with incentives to train and stay in the NWT where at all possible. Thank you.

Thank you. Member for Monfwi.

Okay. Okay, thank you. Another one, you know, mental health and addiction is a major issue, and we've been talking about it a lot in this House in this sitting. And here it says a hundred K or it's a -- it must be a hundred thousand, because funding to support organizations in the delivery of mental health and addiction programming, I think this a hundred K -- or a hundred thousand, maybe one or two communities will be covered the way that it's set up. And why that funding is so low and when you know that it's -- mental health is a major issue. You know, it's affecting everybody in the community from small to larger centre.

Thank you. Oh, Member for Monfwi --

From 2021 to 16 -- yeah, from 164 to a hundred, two consecutive years. Thank you.

Thank you. Minister of Health and Social Services.

Yes, I'm wondering if the Member could tell me what page she's on because when I'm looking at this page, it shows that the estimates for community mental wellness and addictions recovery is $20,359,000. So if I could have some clarification, I could better explain. Thank you.

Thank you. Member for Monfwi.

It's on page 182 and 183. It says funding to support organizations, and there's lot of organizations that's out there that would like to help. Like, there's the friendship centres. There's native women's centre. There's all kinds of, you know, organizations out there and, you know, the Arctic Wellness. This a hundred thousand is not going to go too far to fund organizations that are willing to work with community members in small communities with -- regarding mental health and addictions.

Thank you, Member. Minister of Health and Social Services.

Yes, thank you. I had some questions about this myself. So what that is is the Addictions Recovery Capacity Building Fund, and it is, as I say, for capacity building within the NWT to provide support to mental wellness and addictions. So this is about strengthening NWT resources to respond to those issues. So that's only one part of the total spend on mental health and wellness. So the entire -- the entire spend includes child and youth care counsellors; mental health and addictions programs like the community counselling program; the day and sobering centre; the acute care provided at the psychiatric unit at the hospital; facility-based treatment; on the land healing. And then the specific funds, we have Peer Support, Addictions Recovery and Aftercare, and then the capacity building fund that the Member just mentioned. And in addition to that, the Community Suicide Prevention Fund.

So the money is segmented into a number of different options. Some of it is provided by GNWT employees and others are provided on contract, and yet others are community-based funds where the communities propose to spend the money within the funding criteria and then go ahead and develop their own programs to deliver. So what the Member is looking at is just a fraction of this -- of the total spend on mental health and addictions recovery. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister. Member for Monfwi.

Okay, thank you. Okay, family violence prevention too as well, it's a funding to support organization that offer programs to -- you know, to protect, assess. And I think you just mentioned all the organization or the regions that will be getting a certain amount. Is that only for the shelter? Like, is that for the family violence centre or like Alison McAteer House? Is that what it is for? So is there any other regions that can access that funds where they are, you know, will say, for example, friendship centre? Can they access fund from here to work with families in my regions? Or -- I'm just asking you a question on that. Like, can any other organizations in the regions can apply for that fund?

Thank you. Minister of Health and Social Services.

Yes, thank you. It isn't only for Alison McAteer House. There are family violence shelters in Tuktoyaktuk, Inuvik, Hay River, and Fort Smith. So it supports all of them. This is not an application-based fund. This is a funding existing shelters. I know there's some interest in safe house -- a safe house program in the communities and regions without family violence shelters, and that includes the Tlicho and Sahtu regions. But they are not part of this business plan. Those proposals are not developed to the extent that they have been funded at this point. Thank you.

Thank you. Member for Monfwi.

Okay, I keep forgetting. Okay, thank you. Thank you for the information. Yeah, that's -- I'll just wait until get to the next one.

Thank you. Member for Kam Lake.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, the first line item that I want to look at is on page 181. It's the specialty services. And I see that there's about a $2.5 million increase to that one. And I just note that specialty services is internal medicine, general surgery, pediatrics, obstetrics, gynecology, orthopedics, karyology -- sorry -- urology, oncology. There's a whole list of specialists that Northerners have access to under that line item, and I'm just wondering what percent of specialty services are delivered by locums. Thank you.