Bill Braden

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In a meeting that I had with some mental health professionals a few weeks ago, it became apparent that there are some aspects at least of this that could very well serve not only those people suffering from mental illness, but the professionals who have to grapple with trying to make the right decisions using our legislation as their platform. Would the Minister consider at least a preliminary investigation into what might be done to address some of these more pressing human rights aspects of our law? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. A couple of areas, and I appreciate the Speaker's presentation here. This is his first presentation before committee.

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Welcome to the witness chair, Mr. Delorey, Mr. Speaker. In his comments he mentioned one of the innovations we are undertaking here is the creation of the Cultural Enhancement Advisory Committee to this Assembly. Mr. Speaker, this committee had its origins in the last Assembly, in the 14th, when one of Mr. Delorey’s predecessors commissioned the report on what could be done in and around the building to more dramatically reflect the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions this afternoon are for the Minister of Health and Social Services in the area of our Mental Health Act and its modernization and the services that we provide. Mr. Speaker, it’s my understanding, if I have the statistics right here, that about 50 percent of all visits to doctors are because of mental health related illnesses or problems that people are having. My question is does the NWT have enough capacity and trained workers and professionals to deal with the caseload of mental illness now before us? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Chair, a little bit of administration here. This recommendation, as you would have noted, applies to the Department of Education, Culture and Employment and is not on the books here for the Department of Executive, but we wanted to get it on record, so that is why it was brought in at this point. Thank you. That is all, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. What page are we on? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Among the many different areas that this very active and diverse and, I should say from my perspective, pretty efficient group does is the overall communication mandate for the GNWT. Although it is disseminated, Mr. Chairman, across our departments, there is a policy function, I believe, that is vested in the Executive and a kind of umbrella coordinating function and expectation for consistency and performance that has its home in this government’s Executive department.

We talked about this at some length in the committee’s reviews with the Minister, Mr. Chairman, and I...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the discussion. I guess, Mr. Chairman, I wanted to double check with the Premier that the committee more or less has it right. We aren’t misreading or misinterpreting some of the actions that have been taken and we are not totally off base in recommending that. At least from our side of the fence, we do see a number of similarities coming through here and we found it confusing; mandates that were seemingly quite similar and seemed to involve a lot of the same people and the same outside organizations, but yet were being handled in different places.

As...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. That really satisfies my curiosity on this bill. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Standing Committee on Accountability and Oversight conducted its public review of Bill 21, An Act to Amend the Public Service Act, on March 7, 2005. The committee would like to thank the Union of Northern Workers for their presentation and the Minister and his staff for introducing the bill.

The committee is generally supportive of Bill 21, which will result in long overdue improvements to the staffing appeals process for public service jobs. The committee noted that many of the proposed changes to the process are not included in this bill and will instead be...

Mr. Speaker, I’m wondering if the Minister would perhaps even broaden that to include the whole of the Mental Health Act. It is a sizable piece of legislation and given that some…I know there are many of these larger pieces of work that really are carried over from one term to another, they will take more than the years that we have left in this Assembly. Would the Minister take a serious look at investigating and modernizing the whole Mental Health Act? Thank you.