Sandy Lee

Just firstly on the Food First Foundation, I have seen the letter from Mr. Lafferty. It was under the heading of Executive Council because it involves more than one department. That’s why I said it might be getting funding from somewhere, I just don’t know exactly which department. I’m going to get back to the Member, as I had already stated.

The Mental Health Program review began in November and we hope to have that finalized with recommendations to the standing committee in the spring, April-May.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We couldn’t do that to authorities. We couldn’t ask them to do something unless we could provide the funding. To have a 24-hour phone line for every authority, going by the H1N1 flu line, those are very, very expensive program options. We have to make a decision. It’s a duplication of service. Yet nothing stops us from requiring the authorities as long as we are willing to provide the funding. A 24-hour phone line will require two to three staff. That’s, right away, $300,000, and that’s people with knowledge about addictions. If we were to do that to all six...

The audit was conducted by Education, Culture and Employment. I have been working with the Minister on that. I do not have the recent updated information on it. I’m sorry. I will undertake to get back to him on it. Thank you.

We do provide, for example, we do have a day shelter program which is a form of... I mean, we are not obviously the users of that facility, don’t stay there, but we do serve the same clients that come out of Salvation Army or other homes in Yellowknife. We have funded the SideDoor Youth Centre with one of these two programs. We provide funding to Salvation Army, Centre for Northern Families and YWCA, so that is sort of the multi-spectrum of funding that we provide to different groups that deal with the homeless population or, you know, it is not entirely accurate to say that none of that money...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, we have a program and policy to address the persons with disabilities. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As I stated, this has been in our work plan. It has been the objective of the department to set up more children and family services committees. This issue has come up before the CFSA recommendation and, as I stated to Member Abernethy, we have had difficulties setting that up. So the business plan said our goal is to have at least five.

Right now, and as the Members know, the only real possibility right now of setting up within this year is Fort McPherson, and that has been in the works for three years. It has been extremely difficult. It’s not just about the...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There are lots of issues wrapped up into the Member’s statement there. The Quitline, that program is being delivered outside of the NWT because we could not cost-effectively man or woman that phone line and to give the kind of technical information to those who wished to quit smoking. It’s not just us but many jurisdictions across the country are using the same service provider so that you have people who are equipped to answer those questions. We expect that demand for that service will increase when the federal government launches a more aggressive campaign on the...

I believe the health authority and the hospital and the unit there do review incidents as the ones that the Member is referring to and I will undertake to get the relevant information for the Member.

I need to reiterate that we are not hiring employees for the renovated Joe Greenland Centre. Home care workers, we are talking about home care workers that will be employed by the authority to work for the entire community.

In answer to the Member’s first question, the briefing note said two home care support workers. When I was in Aklavik meeting with the community, after that we have looked into that further and we are working toward having three home care support workers. So it is one more than what was suggested in the briefing note. Right now there is one home care worker in Aklavik and he...

As the Member indicated, this is one of the items that we discussed when we met with the committee and I am considering those and analysing them. Mr. Chairman, I agree with the Member that this is something that we need to work on and that’s the reason why, when I did my opening statement last Friday for this budget, I announced an extension of these programs to Early Childhood Intervention Program in Fort Simpson and Inuvik. So, obviously, the department has made that a priority and put it into the budget and within the opening statement.

The recommendation, how I read it, was that that should...