Tom Beaulieu

Thank you. In all fairness, we do fund the Seniors’ Society, the territorial society as well as the local seniors’ societies, but I am prepared to have the discussion at the Member’s request. Thank you.

Mahsi cho, Mr. Speaker. As Minister responsible for Seniors, I don’t have a specific budget under that ministry. However, I have access to budgets within the other departments. So far I’ve been meeting with the NWT Seniors’ Society, the group have fairly regular contact with the Seniors’ Society, and their requests come through me, and then I take those requests and go back to the various departments depending on which department they’re making a request of. So we are engaging the Seniors’ Society definitely. Thank you.

I am prepared to have the department and the Beaufort-Delta Health and Social Services Authority engage the Gwich’in Tribal Council to see if it’s feasible for us to do some wellness work at that camp.

As a result of the program, the plan is to release the final evaluation next month in April 2013. Then in collaboration with the chronic disease management people, we’re hoping that once we release the report that we will start to develop a framework through the Healthy Choices Framework and Health Promotion to start to deliver the program soon after that. I would anticipate that sometime this summer or this fall we will roll out the programs as a result of those pilots that we had run.

Mr. Speaker, definitely, language and culture is a huge part of our diabetes work. In fact, we work with the home care…(inaudible)…Canadian Health under the Aboriginal Diabetes Initiative. We get funding from that and the work is more or less in the chronic disease prevention. So this is the work we do. We specifically get money for the Aboriginal Diabetes Initiative, so language and culture would be very important in the delivery of that specific program. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, yes, I will work towards producing a discussion paper to be shared not only with Cabinet, but the rest of the Legislative Assembly, on looking at consolidating budgets under my responsibility as Minister of Seniors. Thank you.

Thank you. As the current structure is set up, we do go through the budget process, business planning process, and within the provisions of those business plans and those budgets there are seniors programs from the various departments. So if there is a consideration that those budgets would be pooled and put under the Ministry of Seniors, then that’s something that we would have to have a discussion not only with Cabinet, but I think an open discussion with the entire Legislative Assembly. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m hoping that this was one of the areas that the Minister’s Forum on Addictions and Community Wellness would be looking at. I know that infrastructure is available and exists within existing infrastructure that is designed for wellness and treatment. I’m hoping that it’s looked at, but I don’t have an indication now that they have looked at that. Not because they haven’t, but because they just haven’t advised me that they have. Initially when we rolled out our wellness plan, I don’t believe there was money allocated to work within that wellness camp.

Mr. Speaker, earlier as I was responding to another Member, I had indicated that the department had put in about $850,000 over the last couple fiscal years to try to address the issues. Also, the department continues to allow communities to access on-the-land programs. What has happened is several of the communities have taken advantage of the program. Deline and Tulita are two of the communities that took advantage of the on-the-land program and put proposals in for and utilize their full budget of $25,000 in both communities and did some on-the-land work. We are hoping to expand that program...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The plan for the Sahtu, in as far as the extra workload given to or, I guess, distributed to the alcohol workers and also even the medical staff, the nurses and that, has been, at this time, for the CEO out of Norman Wells to work with those two communities specifically, and also monitoring the other communities, was to monitor those two communities closely, and if at any time there was a requirement for additional health personnel like clinicians or any mental wellness personnel, I guess, community wellness workers, then there would be a call for it. Then we would go...