Norman Yakeleya

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Far too many people are hurt or killed every year in accidents related to alcohol abuse. About half of the drinkers in the Northwest Territories drink heavily, at least once a month. Heavy drinking often leads to dangerous behaviour. More than half the NWT population experiences harm from someone else’s drinking. In 2009 about one in four of those accidents were assaults. This is going on every year. Thousands of people are harmed due to somebody else’s drinking, even if they don’t drink themselves. Of course, many drinkers are harmed too.

Alcohol was a factor in 22...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. This budget, when you gotta go, you gotta go.

---Laughter

It is the learning process of doing this budget here over the last nine years. The Minister has been quite steady and has been quite consistent with the message from government. I do want to, on a serious note, offer my condolences to him and his family. That is part of business in the government and continuing on doing what we have to do.

The process that we have entered into is doing our committee work, doing our consultation with the Minister, but the Minister also… I want to hear more about the Minister’s public...

Mr. Speaker, my questions are for the Minister of Health and Social Services.

Please provide the actual cost to the Department of Health and Social Services of alcohol-related health conditions.

Please provide the success rate for individuals who have completed a 20-day program.

What specific measurements are used to determine the success rates for alcohol treatment programs?

The Minister is right; that’s the 46 million dollar question. How do we educate our people – with the high crime rates, high incident rates – to drink responsibility and have a healthy attitude towards alcohol? The Minister talked about this, and the Minister of Health is on a mission to look at this issue, hear the people of the Northwest Territories and come up with some creative ideas how to approach this business of alcohol.

Is the Minister working with the Minister of Health to take some of those ideas that possibly could help with the liquor store to educate our people, so in 10 or 20...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Reading the Department of Finance and, specifically, the section on the Liquor Commission, there is a corporate culture, a vision, a mission, a mandate, values, et cetera. I want to ask our Minister, in light of this corporate culture and one of the visions is that our customers will have a healthy and responsible attitude towards alcohol consumption, and we’ll provide them with the opportunity to discover, enjoy and share a wide variety of beverage alcohol. Since the lifting of the restrictions at the Norman Wells Liquor Store, the amount of liquor has gone up by 50...

Mr. Speaker, it has been reported that 85 percent of reported crimes in the Northwest Territories are alcohol and drug related. Ninety percent of inmates of Northwest Territories correction facilities have addiction issues.

With the usage of Nats’ejee K’eh and looking at the programs, is the Minister looking at a culturally relevant program? I believe that these numbers have to reflect a lot of the smaller communities, and a lot of the inmates in our centres are Aboriginal people. Is the Minister seriously looking at a drug and alcohol treatment program, not a mental health and wellness program...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In my Member’s statement, I quoted some pretty astronomical numbers in regard to the alcohol abuse-related deaths, injuries, accidents and suicides. On that pendulum swing right over the next, people who want to sober up and they use Nats’ejee K’eh, can the Minister inform me that at Nats’ejee K’eh, with a budget of $2 million and an occupancy rate of 46 percent, if Nats’ejee K’eh is working with the people of the Northwest Territories?

I also understand that the Minister is seeking information from the communities and I support the Minister on the community addiction...

Sometimes being in the south feels like a dragon’s den. It gets pretty hot in here.

I want to ask the Minister, other than the bottled water concept, I know that the community of Deline really wants to move on this issue; however, there were a number of barriers for them to hook up this new water plant system to look at a bottled water system and they just didn’t get the support they thought they could get from this government. I want to ask the Minister, if other initiatives in the North can have such as the eggs in Hay River, those eggs should be in each of our stores in our communities. That...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have my Member’s statement on the update of the key issues in the Sahtu that I want to talk about in the next five weeks. We just heard the budget and we’re certainly asking questions regarding the needs in the Sahtu.

I want to talk about some of the things that are happening in my region. I’m asking questions on why. Why wait? Why can’t we do things differently in the Sahtu region? For example, in the Sahtu there is a real high interest of oil and gas. Oil is booming in the Sahtu. Why are we waiting to put in an all-weather road in the Sahtu? What else do we have to...

Would the Minister also look at preventative measures next year for the Department of Transportation as advising these hotshot rookie drivers of semi-trucks that you need to listen to the people in the North, maybe put on chains and then the tires on some of them? I’m not too familiar with the Sahtu hills and driving through this region here. Can the Minister put together a policy that all drivers would know when they come into the Sahtu, driver beware?