Tom Beaulieu

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. To answer the first question, all people matter, as far as health and social services go. I don’t know when and if young men are going to get a needle for this virus. I don’t have the information here, so I couldn’t give him a date, or if, in fact, it is going to happen at all. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, those, although they’re called extended beds in H.H. Williams, are actually long-term beds. Those long-term beds will be outside the current new health centre that is being constructed in Hay River. In fact, the direction that we are going now is with the expansion of the Woodland Manor, to add the 10 beds to the Woodland Manor. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, I’m not asking anybody to request information to go through an ATIPP request for information. What I said was if I’m allowed to table a report or a business plan that’s been presented to me by a board that’s now defunct, I would be pleased to do it. Thank you.

Regardless of how good the Member thinks the plan was or what we thought of the plan, the bottom line was that one counsellor, one person to do counselling for all the people that were supposed to go there, that only one person was in the position there to help the people who were going there for treatment. The board themselves, through the executive director, had indicated that she thought there was a safety issue here. To continue on to have intake of people into Nats’ejee K’eh with only one counsellor was a problem, and this created a safety issue not only for the counsellor but for the...

Mr. Speaker, I apologize. I recognize that we were dealing with the child and family service resource centres that are now under the Department of Education, Culture and Employment, but the plan to consolidate programs along with our Healthy Family Program is in the works. It is something that we are doing under the work that we are doing under the Early Childhood Development Framework. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I can do that. I can provide the information to the House on our work in all of these areas. I don’t have a problem with that. I can provide information on the amount of money that we’re spending in these areas. I can compare that with what other jurisdictions are doing as well. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, one of the main components to expansion of the Midwifery Program was to have the Midwifery Program that is currently operational in Fort Smith be the main supports to developing a Midwifery Program in Hay River and then expansion to Beaufort-Delta and ultimately into a territorial Midwifery Program.

One of the midwives resigned just at the point when we were launching into our plan to expand the Midwifery Program, so the first action became the replacement of that midwife. That has been done. A new midwife has been hired. A team has been put together.

In addition to that, another...

No, I’m not aware that there is a vast discrepancy between the money that we provide as a government and the other governments across the country provide specifically for autism and Attention Deficit Disorder. I do recognize that it is fairly new work, but we are getting involved in many areas of this type of area where we’re starting to learn more about the impacts, and we’re learning more about the actual recognition or the prevalence of these various disabilities as we’re working at the national level with other jurisdictions. Thank you.

I don’t have the number of individuals that have taken advantage of the four treatment centres that we have contracts with in the South; however, I do know that when individuals have approached Health and Social Services, whether it be through a wellness office in their community or through the department or through one of the authorities, that it’s been fairly quick. The process is very quick and the individual is able to go out for treatment in a very short time basis, and that is what we were trying to achieve. But the numbers of the people that went and the numbers that had completed the...

Thank you. There wasn’t medical detox occurring at Nats’ejee K’eh, number one. People were on a waiting list and they had to wait for six weeks in community counselling before they get to Nats’ejee K’eh. So there was no actual medical detox occurring in Nats’ejee K’eh.

Medical detox is available at the hospitals and individuals can be given hospital beds for medical detox based upon requests. At this time if individuals need medical detoxification outside of the hospital environment, then our option is to send that individual or individuals who are requiring medical detox to the southern...