Jane Groenewegen

Mr. Speaker, over the years we’ve had much debate in this House about whether impact and benefit agreement payments, beneficiary shareholders payments, bingo earnings, you know, we’ve had discussion about all kinds of, you know, the Child Tax Benefit, whether or not these things should be treated as income. Is there any review or does a policy review occasionally take place to determine or is it just on an as-required basis? Is there any forum, I guess, in which we can have input that could go towards changing that policy?

Thank you very much, Mr. Bouchard. Next I have Mr. Moses.

Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I listened with interest as my colleagues raised the issue of the Child Tax Benefit and how that is clawed back. Mr. Miltenberger will remember in a previous government we had a Minister of ECE that we dubbed “The Claw.” I’m sure that Mr. Lafferty would not like to receive such notoriety.

I had an incident recently in my constituency which causes me to wonder about how far we go to claw back things. This constituent had an unfortunate tragedy in her family. Community members came together and raised money and made donations to help this family cope with this. Now, I...

Thank you, Mr. Nadli. Next I have Mr. Bromley.

Thank you. I’ll ask the Sergeant-at-Arms, please, to escort the witnesses into the Chamber.

Minister Miltenberger, for the record, would you please introduce your witness?

I see this as only being helpful. When there is a crisis of mental health issues in a community, what are we doing about protocol so that everybody knows what the plan is? You don’t hear very often of people being medevaced because there’s a mental health crisis. You do certainly when there’s a physical illness, you hear that but, when there’s a mental illness and there’s a crisis, you don’t hear of what the protocols are for dealing with that.

We live in a severe climate and environment, and when you’re in the smaller communities, if we do not have those kinds of protocols and infrastructure...

Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. Next for general comments I have Mr. Yakeleya.

Minister Miltenberger, would you like to bring witnesses to the witness table?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In my Member’s statement today I talked about what I see as a lack of support in the smaller communities for people suffering from mental illness. This is a problem which has come into very clear focus in Hay River in the last month. I am very interested in this Mental Health First Aid program which is rolling out in a couple of small communities and I would like to ask the Minister of Health and Social Services what the plan is for the roll-out of this. If he could just describe it for us briefly and give people some hope that maybe there is something coming here that...