Alfred Moses

I know we’re unique in the North in terms of barriers and challenges, especially when it comes to the remote communities. I just want to make reference to a news article on CBC, I don’t know how many years ago, but they were talking to a psychologist or psychiatric physician that talked about not being able to do a correct assessment because he couldn’t see the individual and talk to him, so I think there are some flaws in there. I just want to put that out there.

In terms of withdrawal management, do we have a policy right now in terms of how long do we keep an individual who’s going through...

What are we doing for the small communities that just have health centres and specifically with the eight communities that don’t have nurses that can provide any kind of medical treatment for anybody that might be going through some withdrawals? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I’m kind of intrigued in how the Department of Justice and Department of ECE both contributed to the Day Shelter here in Yellowknife. I believe there’s only one other Day Shelter in the Northwest Territories and that’s in Inuvik, and whether or not the department would work with the other departments in looking at accessing those funds, as well, because the cost of doing business further up north is a lot higher. So, I’m intrigued and wouldn’t mind getting more information on that, and I’ll ask the Ministers when it does become time to review this. Thank you, Mr. Chair. More of a comment.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Before I begin, I’d just like to thank Mr. Dolynny and Mr. Nadli, as well as any other Members who have brought a lobbyist registry before government. I’m happy to speak on it today.

When we discussed this in committee, the first thing that came to mind was transparency and accountability on our government and our departments and how we do business throughout the Northwest Territories. The public and public offices have the right to know who is lobbying our government and who is going into contracts with our government. We need to know which groups, businesses and...

I think the concept of having a contest to get Southerners up to our regions in the NWT shows that people are interested in coming up to the North. They had over 4,500 entries just from the Facebook site as well as the radio contest. I didn’t get any statistics on how the TV program showed up.

The active group in Inuvik, the Tourism Stakeholder Committee, is also looking at doing something similar for the Aboriginal Day, Summer Solstice, as well as the Great Northern Arts Festival and our annual reindeer crossing. Would the department look at funding or look at supporting contests of a similar...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have questions today for the Minister of ITI in regards to some of our tourist investments and some of our tourism supports. I mentioned in my Member’s statement the Inuvik Sunrise Festival and the support and interest it got from media campaigns and Facebook. I was just looking at the numbers here, but this very creative group in Inuvik used an organization on Facebook and they garnered over 1,800 contest entries and then on the Rogers Media on the radio show they had over 2,600 entries. So, over 4,500 contest entries to get up to Inuvik to welcome back the sun.

I’d...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. On January 9th to 11th, the community of Inuvik welcomed about 25 out-of-town visitors for the annual Sunrise Festival. I don’t know of any other place in the world that puts that type of events and activities into an event like this where the community is welcoming back the sun after about a month of darkness.

There was about three days of activities and events that were planned in Inuvik. The Town of Inuvik and its partners, organizations and businesses in the community came together and developed a really great three days of events and showcases. I just wanted to...

I agree, not everybody wants to go to treatment, but in some cases not everybody wants the help. But as caring community members, caring families, friends, they see it.

With that, I’ll just lead up into what our current Mental Health Act talks about in terms of, I guess, the substitute consent giver part in here and it’s under the Personal Directives Act. I know that some Members were concerned about the wait times that some community members have to go to treatment, and in some cases the person doesn’t want to go. But under this one act, the Personal Directives Act, it talks about who can...

Just in terms of putting this type of responsibility on the workers in the small communities to now assess what a person is going through, what kind of training are they getting in terms of knowing when to call a medevac or when to admit somebody into a health centre until they get the proper treatment that they do have?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think there’s some good discussion. I’m going to focus mine around the psychiatric nursing unit at Stanton and also just for the whole territory, what kind of psychiatric services we have. It’s also mentioned, there’s a little paragraph that talks about the unit includes beds for withdrawal management. How many beds exactly are in that psychiatric unit and how many are allocated for withdrawal management? Thank you, Mr. Chair.