Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my questions today are for the Minister of Health and Social Services. I want to continue the conversation that the Member for Thebacha started today in regards to homelessness, and I'd like to specifically focus on youth and specifically youth who are exiting the care of the government and who are entering homelessness.

Mr. Speaker, given the disproportionate representation of youth from or in the child and family services system experiencing homelessness in the NWT, will health and social services provide a dedicated navigator to solely provide wraparound care to youth who have aged out of care or are transitioning to independent living? Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Member for Kam Lake. Minister responsible for Health and Social Services.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the question. I remember the Member's statement, and I wanted to localize the number of youth who have applied for support services agreements related to their housing situation. In 2021, that was 18 youth who applied for that out of a total of 68 youth who were in that program.

What I want to say is that as the Member may remember, the child and family services action plan is currently bridging between two plans but the new plan, which will be publicly released in August, will have a dedicated focus on youth supports as you might expect. And as part of this plan, the department is considering piloting specialized positions which will, of course, be subject to funding through the business plan process. So we're interested in the Member's recommendation as we work to provide better services to youth who are homeless. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. And I appreciate that from the Minister. Mr. Speaker, other jurisdictions have acknowledged the challenges of youth exiting government care by creating legislation, policies, and resources to directly help youth transition from care. There are some creative solutions out there that help address this. One example that I wanted to highlight in the House today is agedout.com. It's a web page dedicated to BC young adults who have aged out of government care, and I really highly recommend people take a look at it.

Even within this website, Mr. Speaker, youth can apply for low income housing. The application is right there online, among many other resources. So I'm wondering if the GNWT will work with Home Base YK and the Foster Family Coalition to build resources for youth aging out of care to strategically stop the cycle into homelessness? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, our concern is for youth who have some interaction with child and family services. I think the youth homelessness issue is bigger than that, and it does require a number of parties to come to the table to try and understand the scope of the problem and what the solutions are. I know that there are some resources available now. I'm not familiar with where the gaps are, but that is something that would obviously be useful not only here in Yellowknife, with the largest homelessness population, but in other regional centres. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my question was specific to youth aging out of care. Even when I was putting together my questions for today, I actually spent a lot of time looking around on the health and social services website. It's information about what youth have access to as far as funding support, access to housing; none of this is available online. So any youth who is exiting care that wants autonomy in being able to figure out what services they have available, this doesn't exist right now. And it certainly doesn't exist in a venue that is targeted directly to these youth. And so that is exactly what I'm asking for, is resources specific to youth aging out of care.

My next question, though, Mr. Speaker, and maybe the Minister will want to speak to this in the same breath is will health and social services commit to including a provision in the upcoming revamp, or bill that's being brought forward in the next Assembly, to the Child and Family Services Act that specifically calls for health and social services to offer suitable housing options as a mandatory clause for youth exiting care. So will they turn around and offer a provision of suitable housing for youth who are transitioning from care of the government? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I will certainly make a point of looking at the website agedout.com.

In terms of the Child and Family Services Act, we have received recommendations from the Member and from the social development committee. I'm not in a position to make a commitment that binds the 20th Assembly to what will be in the revision of the Child and Family Services Act. But, of course, we will be doing a transition document and I can include it in that. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister. Final short supplementary. Member for Kam Lake.

Short is not my skill set, Mr. Speaker. No, Mr. Speaker, I appreciate that we can't bind the next government but this is an opportunity to really call on the government to focus on housing and addressing youth homelessness for youth aging out of care in the legislative proposal that comes forward from the government. And I think that this is something that's needed when asking -- you know, we heard a question today about whether or not this homelessness strategy is actually going to solve homelessness. This is something very specific and very strategic that the government can do to address homelessness. And so I highly recommend doing this.

I guess what I'd like to leave this with is will the government, as part of their business plan that's coming forward in August, include a youth aging out of care focused portal where youth can actually access resources, information, applications, in order to have control in their lives as they're aging out of care and understand what they are able to access in order to make that transition smooth and successful? Thank you.

Yes, thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, that would be a great topic to bring up with the 20th Assembly who will be doing the next business plan for the 2024-2025 fiscal year. I think that some of this is a coordination effort. I know that Home Base Yellowknife does enable people to get into leases with landlords and sets youth up in their own housing. I'm not sure whether there is enough of that to make a difference. I think that some youth need significant wraparound resources to be successful as tenants. And so I think all of those are very worthy of consideration. I think for youth as, with any other person, that having housing stabilizes their situation and enables them to deal with some fundamental issues that may be disrupting their lives and to put them on a path to greater success, and I think that that's what we all want. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Member for Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, there's been a lot of work done to date in regards to dealing with Aboriginal people in Canada, and we have the Royal Commission Report, we have the Truth and Reconciliation Report. There's a lot of recommendations that were brought forward and recommendations that talks about reconciliation and public apology. And right now my questions are to the Honourable Premier and as follow up to the unresolved matter of the federal Indian Day Schools that I raised in March of 2023 here in the House.

Mr. Speaker, will the Premier acknowledge that abuse continued to happen after the federal day school program was transferred to the GNWT on April 1st, 1969? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Member for Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh. Madam Premier.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yeah, I look forward to sitting down and having a good discussion on this because, you know, you already know that the Prime Minister of Canada already apologized, and we also had the Pope also apologize, for what happened at the Indian Day School here in Canada. And so we need to talk about that and we need to look at a process, but at the same time if we could have that discussion and agree on doing a public apology. You know, this is a good time to do it because we have Aboriginal Day coming up on June 21st. We have all the assemblies happening already throughout the summer. And I think we should maybe really take a look at that.

So anyways, I think maybe my question is to my other -- sorry, the Premier is just exactly what I just said, is that maybe somebody could work together and try and look on those dates. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Again, I can't give a commitment to offer any kind of an apology or set a deadline when I'm not aware of the issues concerning. So, again, I'd go back to my first offer to have a meeting with the Minister of education and myself and the Member to discuss what the concerns are and move forward from there. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Yeah, thank you, Mr. Speaker. And I'm surprised that, you know, it's 1969, it's only, like, 40 some odd -- or 45 years ago that nobody in the GNWT system, or in this House, has ever raised this issue. It's an issue that's outstanding that needs to be addressed. And it just boggles my mind that, you know, here I am talking about it today and it never showed up on your radars as the Premier here in the Northwest Territories. But regardless, you know, the transfer happened on April 1st, 1969, to the territorial government, and I'm also probably one of the students that were strapped, along with many of our colleagues around the table here. So that issue we need to talk about. And I'm not sure maybe how we want to approach on this. Sitting down maybe one thing but I need to get action. Whether we have a committee or have a committee of Aboriginal groups here, of leaders in the Northwest Territories to talk about it; we got to do something. And it's outstanding. So I just want to see if I get a commitment from the Premier on maybe -- sitting down is one thing but maybe strike a committee, because this is a very important issue because all the issues that we've been talking about around the table here today speaks to the health department etcetera.

But the thing is that we don't have enough money, whether it be for housing or health and social, to deal with these issues. So we need to look at a new approach to work with the Government of Canada to find monies to address this. And it's a big problem but I got to figure a way to try and look at this issue so maybe the Premier could maybe shed light on that. Mahsi.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Because I don't have the background on this, and I haven't heard it in my previous almost eight years of being in this House, it could have been raised before, but I'd like to take notice on this question, Mr. Speaker, so that we can get the information necessary. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Premier. Oral questions. Member for Inuvik Twin Lakes.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my questions are for the Minister of Health and Social Services. And one of the questions I have is related to preventative services. So can the Minister explain to us how many dental therapists does the Northwest Territories have currently on staff now, or if there's dental therapists, dental hygienists, and where are they located? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Member for Inuvik Twin Lakes. Minister responsible for Health and Social Services.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And I appreciate the Member giving me notice on this so I could get that specific information. There are three dental therapists located in Fort Simpson, Fort McPherson, and Inuvik. There is a dental hygienist located in Fort Smith. There is a territorial specialist who is a licensed dental hygienist who provides frontline service to communities and is located in Yellowknife. And we also have dental hygienists who work on casual rotations to fill vacancies. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, you know, I want to say I think -- I'm not sure if it's one or two of the dental therapists that we have, but just doing some reading on this over this last little while working on dental. This has been a big issue, and I was surprised to know that we actually had a dental therapy school in Fort Smith in 1972 that was opened that train local dental therapists free of charge so that they could go back to their communities, and I'm just wondering if we still have any of those dental therapists in the territory. You know, this is -- I just wanted to put that out there because that was good thinking.

So for the communities that don't have dental therapists or dental hygienists, does the Minister know how often that service is provided to each community? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And thank you to the Member for that additional information. I don't know if any of these therapists are ones who were trained in Fort Smith. I would hope that they would have retired by now but, you know, you never know. So, we have staff assigned to go to communities that don't have therapists or hygienists twice a school year. That's the benchmark of service. Sometimes, I will say upfront, we don't meet that because of staffing and travel-related issues and school cancellations. But that's what our benchmark is.

Last year the Beaufort Delta and Sahtu regions did not have the correct number of visits, unfortunately. But on the other side, three communities were added that had not been previously seen by the GNWT, and those communities are Lutselk'e, N'dilo, and Dettah. Thank you.