Michael Miltenberger

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the jobs have been classified, the job descriptions rewritten with the skills, requirements and the education in an outline, and it’s my assumption that people in those positions meet those requirements. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the renovation in Inuvik is to make the office space more habitable. If memory serves me correctly, the offices are in the Semmler Building. They are very crowded. They are trying to renovate to better accommodate the staff. I know they’ve had at least two major sewage backups that have caused a lot of damage. So this is to deal with that particular issue in terms of accommodating the staff. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, the week of October 17th to 23rd is National Foster Family Week. I would like to take a moment to recognize the valuable contribution that foster families make to our communities and our children.

Foster families form an important network of safe, caring homes for children. They have a very challenging and demanding role and provide care for children when parents are unable. There are about 200 foster homes in the NWT that give children a stable, nurturing home environment. It is encouraging to see that so many people in our territory have offered to care for children. Over...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I don’t have an exact figure on hand, but I would like to note that the Member has raised a very important issue. It’s one that I know the Premier has raised at his tables. I’ve raised it since my tenure as the Minister of Health and Social Services with the three federal Health Ministers that I’ve had the privilege of working with over the last three years. It’s also an issue for the other two territories. It’s hopefully one of the issues that will be put on the table if we can get this working group together that there’s funding been identified for out of...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, in the budget we do have about $247 million. We’re in the business planning process right now. It has been publicly announced that there are fiscal targets we are looking at as a government that there are restraint targets that we’re trying to hit as a government. Health, in fact, has to shoulder their share of that burden. So, Mr. Speaker, within that context, we rolled out, two years ago, a Mental Health and Addictions Strategy in response to the Chalmers report, State of Emergency. We’ve hit year one and two. Year three is on the books yet to be...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the programs we have to deal with addictions and alcohol and drug abuse are geared, as the Member knows, to trying to deal with the many complex issues presented by alcohol abuse and addictions. The issue of crack cocaine addiction is one where there is no discreet program. We have been dealing with them on a case-by-case basis. There are other jurisdictions where this is a much larger problem and they have set up special specific facilities and programs to deal with these particular situations. We’ve been dealing, as in the Member’s case that he...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, what I am saying is that when you are dealing with teenagers, unless there is an apprehension and they are put into some kind of custodial agreement under the Child Welfare Act, it’s very difficult if they are not willing to partake in whatever program is laid out to force them to that. People around this table know, and those that are old enough to have teenagers will know that teenagers are very strong minded. They have minds of their own. They also have their own rights as young adults. So there are places, there are some legal vehicles like...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the member’s comments and sense of chagrin and displeasure of the members. If I could just add this to the discussion here, the budgets that are done for health boards, since I’ve become Minister, there is no formula like there is with education. There is a process that has evolved over time, through historic use and ongoing forced growth in increments. We are in the process of trying to develop a funding formula.

With regard to this hospital, we, as a client, bought a design, we agreed to a design that was going to deliver these wonderful things in...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the Member raised the issue in her Member’s statement. It is a problem. It’s a problem in the community of Fort Smith and we hear it on the radio from other communities where MLAs’ communities are struggling with the issue and they have had community meetings, they have tried to get parents to the table, their community leadership, Health and Social Services, the RCMP, the teachers. It’s an issue that plagues us all. We have, as a department, some resources available. In most communities we have social workers, we have mental health workers, community...

Mr. Speaker, the detail of new money is not available to any of us yet. But I can tell the Member, as I indicated earlier in this House, that year three of the mental health and addictions plan is there on the books ready to be rolled out, pending appropriate funding being available. If there is money for addictions, the intent would be to look at that third year, as well as clearing up some of the shortfalls and inadequacies that are there and that we have identified in the first two years as we rolled out the program to do with office space and those types of things. So if there is money...