Tom Beaulieu

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Mental Health First Aid course is something that our department is offering to professionals from the regions and communities, that they go back to their communities to put on workshops on mental health that would be open to the citizens, teachers, anybody that wishes to learn more about mental health issues at the community or regional levels.

Yes, our department does support that type of philosophy. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, initially when the shelter opened, it was just to give the people a warm place during the day so that they are not wandering around and up and down the main street. It was someplace where they could sit in a warm place, watch movies, watch TV and use facilities and so on that were available there. That was the intent of it.

As time went on there were more demands placed on the society that was running it, such as are there any programs available for those individuals? Is there something that could be done with them? Could you do in-house programs? Do you recommend them to...

Thank you. Maybe yes, maybe no.

---Laughter

Mr. Speaker, I don’t know if we are going to be funding it beyond March 2013, because this was originally a three-year pilot. All the partners were in for three years. Now we are alone. We are continuing to fund it. We have funded it for one more year. It has its opposition; there is no question about it.

We want to evaluate what is there. We want to see if there are programs that we are putting in there now such as a navigator type of service to help individuals to pursue employment, education opportunities. I am going to see if those things actually have an impact.

We are going to run this...

Mr. Speaker, yes, I will commit to providing the information to the Member of this House. Thank you.

From my understanding, we are moving about 11,000 patients annually through medical travel, so the last number that I have from the Stanton Hospital annual general meeting was that the no-shows are 12 percent. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I wish to table the following document, entitled Government of the Northwest Territories Response to Motion 4-17(2), Improving Drug and Alcohol Programs. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, the Member is correct; the drug-resisting infections cost the community and health system billions of dollars yearly. MRSA is not a nationally reportable infection.

What we are doing is requesting information just from other jurisdictions to see what is happening, like trying to look at the best practices on a national level to see if we could employ the best practices here in the Northwest Territories by seeing how other jurisdictions are handling similar issues pertaining to this virus across the country. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, as I indicated earlier, drug-resistant infections cost a tremendous amount to the health care system. I think that these are clinical decisions made by doctors and that is their decision, is to not over-prescribe a certain drug into the system due to the fact that the virus or infection may be able to build up an immunity to that drug, then that is something that the department will follow. These decisions are clinical and then we try to take the advice of clinicians. Thank you.