Julie Green

Yes, thanks. I think the Member is talking to the possibility that discussing addiction for youth would trigger protection concerns. That is not the case at present. If a family approaches child and family services, the first step would be a needs assessment followed by an offering of different options that the family could take advantage of and when they choose one, then a plan is tailored to that family and to the person who needs treatment.

We're working hard to combat this stigma that admitting any difficulty in parenting is going to trigger protection concerns. We are very dedicated to...

Yes, thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the suggestion and I'm prepared to take it. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I can't offer an opinion on that. This is a first in Canada, the decriminalization of the possession of small amounts of illicit drugs. We're very interested in seeing what comes of this in BC. And of course because the toll of overdose deaths has been so huge in BC, we are hoping that it is successful in helping people to address the stigma of receiving treatment for illicit drug use. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, that long list of health and addictions counsellors and wellness workers and so on, these are permanent staff in Hay River. And so they are there indefinitely. The additional resources really depend on the demand. So we are expecting there could be a surge in demand tomorrow after the or Friday, pardon me, after the community debriefings.

At this point, we haven't had an overwhelming response to our offer. But the resources are in place, and we encourage people who need them to use them. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I'm pleased to say we have lots of capacity. There are two fulltime mental health and addictions counsellors, one fulltime child and youth care counsellor, one parttime practicum student, two community wellness workers, a clinic supervisor for CYCC, and a manager who also sees clients. Two additional mental health counsellors are arriving in Hay River from Fort Smith to facilitate community debriefings that are planned for later this week. We also, through HRSSA's communities counselling service, they attend the Soaring Eagle Friendship Centre sharing...

Good afternoon, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, when I became Minister of Health and Social Services in August 2020, I had the opportunity to add two personal priorities to the Premier’s mandate letter for me. One of the two was to reduce the toll of substance abuse on the residents of the Northwest Territories by leading a wholeofgovernment interdepartmental approach to developing evidencebased policies and programs and develop a robust addictions treatment aftercare regime, including a territorial alcohol strategy.

Mr. Speaker, I chose this priority for a couple of reasons. The first is that I am...

For.

Yes, thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the points that are being made today. It is a priority of the health system to ensure that people have equitable access to safe and effective healthcare. I know that isn't the case all the time. But "all the time" is certainly what we are striving for.

It's important to say that we are facing an unprecedented crisis of staffing in our healthcare system. We have vacancies across the board. We have, coming out on Friday, our health human resources plan, which will discuss some of the medium and longterm initiatives that we plan to take to...

Yes, thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we've done quite a lot of work in my time expanding the number of communitybased treatment programs that are available to Indigenous governments primarily and also to community governments. It's really driven by those entities about what range of ages they take into their programs.

So, for example, we have the On the Land Healing Fund, Community Suicide Prevention Fund, Peer Support Fund, and Addictions Recovery and Aftercare Fund.

So these funds are set up with a focus but the implementation is really, as I said just now, up to the Indigenous...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, what we consider in providing addiction services for our youth and children is the vulnerability of the population and our ability to support them. So I feel very confident that having that response come through child and family services is very important.

One of the services they offer, for example, is when a child goes to treatment outside of the community, outside of the territory, they arrange for courtesy supervision, which means that there's a social worker where the child is who will check on them, connect them to any additional services and make sure...