Glen Abernethy

That question has been asked and debated many times in this House. What we have learned over the years is that in order to provide holistic care, we need to make sure that our social services side is working closely and cooperatively with the health and social services side. Moving to a single authority and moving forward with our Cultural Competency Action Plan has given us the opportunity to move in a more client-focused delivery model here in the Northwest Territories, which brings social services staff as well as health practitioners together to do holistic healing.

If we start breaking...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. It is done by a team of multiple departments. I have already indicated to the Member that I have told the department to do some updates. They have indicated that they need to make sure that the information is all right so that it can be put in there in a way that is logical. They have indicated that work is being done. Hopefully, we will see it on the website shortly.

Mr. Chair, you may be the best judge of that, but I was under the impression that we were on administrative and support services, not community health programs. Your observation will be appreciated here.

Mr. Speaker, I have actually been having conversations with some of our front-line staff to try to get a determination as to some of the frustrations they feel. Part of the frustration they feel is that, with the implementation of Building Stronger Families, they were asked to do an awful lot, both provide their duties and services they did prior to implementation but also learn and test an entire new system. It has made them a little thin. They have said they want more training. They have said they want better contact and involvement in making decisions. They want to be able to know that...

That is correct.

I appreciate the Member's comment, but, because other people breach those confidentiality and talk about things, it doesn't mean we in this Assembly should. I appreciate that the Member is ultimately talking about cultural safety, and I appreciate that conversation, but it's inappropriate to use people's names in this House.

We have done a significant amount of work to develop cultural safety training here, in the Department of Health and Social Services. We have an Indigenous Health and Community Wellness division who have actually worked with different Indigenous governments and individuals...

This is one of the issues that came up in the review of Child and Family Services that the Member from Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh and I participated in. We have made some changes within the system so that, if a family member wants to foster the child and become their caregiver, we can actually facilitate that and help them and provide them with a foster fee. If they were to adopt the child, that would become a familiar relationship, and it wouldn't necessarily get some coverage.

Once again, the system we are putting in place is about building stronger families and supporting families through these...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we did work very closely with the Auditor General during this report, and in a number of situations, they did identify files and individuals where they thought there was some immediate risk. We dealt with those immediately. We reached out with our staff to engage with those people that were in immediate risk.

In addition to that, we have also conducted some of our own audits. We have seen those things. We have been reaching out to residents across the Northwest Territories to make sure that we are actually meeting those standards now. In many cases, we are...

The system that existed before was purely an apprehension-based system that did not actually focus on building families or supporting the residents of the Northwest Territories. If a child was at risk, they were taken. That is not what the residents of the Northwest Territories told us they wanted. They wanted a system that supported families and help build families. That's what we put in place.

Again, we acknowledge that we did not necessarily get it right as far as roll-out. We spread our staff too thin. We have invested millions of dollars in this change initiative to bring in the tools that...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I'm actually quite proud of the work that we did on the 16th Assembly on that report. Tom Beaulieu, the Member for Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh was the chair of that committee.

When I became the Minister of Health and Social Services five years ago, not seven as the Member has indicated, one of the first questions I asked is: where are we in implementing the recommendations from the standing committee? I was deeply saddened to realize that no progress had been made on any of the recommendations.

At that time, I made it a priority for the department to begin moving on...