Tom Beaulieu

The home care services that are being provided through the authorities and the communities will make a decision on whether or not they’re available to do respite services. All indications are that if respite services are needed in communities where we don’t actually have a respite program, that home care would be able to handle the extra workload of doing respite care, but through an approved process, that they would be able to handle respite care that was needed by individuals at the community level.

For this planning cycle, for this current business planning process, we are not bringing any new initiatives into the mix, but we are reviewing requests through our presentations to the Standing Committee on Social Programs. After our request on the Standing Committee on Social Programs, we review what they come back with. They write a letter back to the government indicating that these are the areas they want us to look at. We would then examine that and go through the process. But I don’t think respite care was a part of anything that came back from Social Programs. But we are moving through...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There is nothing in the capital plan for new treatment centres, new detox centres, as most people in the House know. We have made a decision at the beginning of this government that any infrastructure needed for addictions, treatment of addictions, would be from current infrastructure, existing infrastructure that’s owned by the government and we’re still on that task. We haven’t changed in the first year of this government to all of a sudden make a decision that we’re going to set aside other capital issues or plans that have been on the books for several years and...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to recognize Dr. Ewan Affleck, if he’s still in the House, and his wife, Susan Chatwood, and his father-in-law, Susan’s father, Andrew Chatwood, who are here to watch their daughter Anika work today as a Page.

Building a curriculum for students realized that that was something that has come as a request. There are health programs and addiction programs and so on in the high schools. That is something that ourselves… It’s not early childhood development work but ourselves and Education that would be prepared to collaborate on in the development of curricula for that, but it’s within the mandate of ECE in order to develop that curriculum.

Mr. Speaker, treatment is available to individuals that are incarcerated, but the success, again, is difficult to determine. Sometimes individuals will go to treatment, go through their incarceration without any issues, any indications, and once they get out, then at what point do we measure them?

It’s difficult to determine success. You see it. There are successes. There is no question about it. There are a lot of people out there who have successfully quit drinking or have successfully quit using drugs. Again, how they affiliate with the treatment centre that is sitting on the Hay River...

The terms of reference for the addictions forum will be to get the information, gather the information and the recommendations. Their recommendations are going to be to ourselves and will consist of this is what the issue is and the community thinks this is the way it should be addressed. Our responsibility at Health and Social Services would then be to apply our authorities’ and our department’s work to what the recommendations are. It’s going to be at that point where those health programs and what the recommendations from the addictions forum will meet. It’s not specifically in the mandate...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Although within the health system we don’t actually have designated beds for people to detoxify, we do have beds so that an individual that is saying that he is ready now to quit and needs to go through detox, then the health centre should be getting in touch with the authority to advise if there are any beds available for that specific individual.

Each case is different. If this person does go into the health centre needing detoxification and is ready to go, then I think it is incumbent upon the health centre to go through their authority and try to find them a bed in...

It’s nothing specific. In the cases where individuals are going to treatment and apply for treatment down south, or there’s a recommendation from the authority through the community counselling for an individual to go for treatment down south is usually because of the complex nature of the individual’s addictions. Sometimes addictions and mental health are very, very closely associated. I think 40, I hate to mention the percentage, but I think over half of the individuals that go for counselling for addictions also had mental health issues.

I don’t have that information with me. I think it’s a fair amount of people. We’ve come back for supps to the Legislative Assembly on an annual basis for southern placements and so on for addictions. It does go through the Territorial Southern Placement Committee, so the committee would then determine that an individual would go down. But the exact number, I don’t have with me today, but I can provide that to the Member if he wishes. Thank you.