Alfred Moses

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.

That action plan was developed February 2008 and a lot has changed in the last seven years, and I appreciate the Minister working with the Persons with Disabilities Council to look at modernizing this and see how we can take better steps in working with the Council and with individuals.

The next one is in terms of home care support and whether or not we’re providing our home care staff in the communities and in the regional centres… I know we have, I think, when I was working with public health, we only had one home care support worker, and to deal with a community of over 3,000 at the time was...

I do appreciate that. I think it will give us an indication of how well we as a government are doing for employees out in the workforce.

I mentioned that on November 25, 2014, the Mental Health Commission of Canada released the implementation guide for psychological health and safety workplace standards. This is the first time something like this has ever been done.

Is the Minister familiar with that program or that the release had happened last November and whether his department is looking into that type of implementation program as something we can build on here in the Northwest Territories...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I guess this is a big piece of the Health and Social Services in terms of programs and services that we provide to residents and also supporting our not-for-profit organizations. I guess the first question that I do have is about a year ago, yes, just over a year ago we tabled the Early Childhood Development Action Plan in the House here, and it was a combination between Education, Culture and Employment and Health and Social Services. When you look at the action items, the Department of Health and Social Services was accountable for 14 of those action items. With a year...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. When we talk about mental health, there are so many branches and so many different avenues we can take in addressing and talking about this very, very harmful disease. What I want to talk about today is some of the work that’s been done with the Mental Health Commission of Canada.

Last year, November 25th, the Mental Health Commission of Canada released a comprehensive implementation guide to help Canadian employers fully adopt the national standard of Canada for psychological health and safety in the workplace, something that is needed. This implementation guide is...

I think the next question that I have in line deals with the ambulatory care services. On a couple of occasions during my term, we have had infants that were born in the Beaufort-Delta in the Inuvik Regional Hospital that were born with jaundice. I’ve asked twice in this House about BiliBlankets. I believe they only have one at the Inuvik Hospital. Should two babies that are born with jaundice happen to be born at the same time, one will be able to get the phototherapy that they need with the blanket, but the other one we’d have to send out on a medevac and those are thousands and thousands of...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Just following up in some of the areas that Mr. Dolynny was speaking to in terms of services outside the NWT. Has a study been done or do we have data showing what our most frequent visits are or services that are being provided from Alberta, for instance, to our residents? In terms of cost efficiency, do we have the opportunity to see where we’re spending all those dollars and rather than continue to spend those dollars and send our services down south, that it would be more appropriate if we purchased a piece of equipment and take it somewhere, say, centrally located...