Tom Beaulieu

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Our deputy minister has been meeting with the Alberta Health and Wellness people and they last met in April of this past year. They had indicated that they had promised that they would provide us with some continual updates as things change at the Municipal Airport as they go for closing the Municipal Airport. Recently the DM has asked if she could participate in the Transition Advisory Committee at Alberta Health and Wellness, but we have not received a response on that yet. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We heard a lot about this when we travelled in the Mackenzie Delta. The fact that there is no long-term care facility, as we refer to long-term care facility where there is nursing care and all of that, in the Mackenzie Delta in the three communities that this Member represents. However, they did talk about reopening and re-profiling the Joe Greenland Centre from the type of care that was being provided and shut down to where the Housing Corporation will be renovating that facility and then allocating those for elders within the community of Aklavik and perhaps...

Mr. Speaker, it’s fairly obvious what the issues are in mental health and addictions from our perspective. We are trying to develop a plan that moves forward. There are gaps in the system. That’s what we need to address. This action plan, we’re trying to develop something that moves us forward, gives us a better view of what those gaps are, what those issues are, and then the whole base that through business planning process we will be able to fill those gaps and develop something on the longer term.

We do actually know where we are trying to go. We have a pretty good idea that we have...

Mr. Speaker, the nature of all of the action plan is prevention. If we are able to incorporate a good action plan around mental health and addictions, that is overall prevention. The whole action plan is about prevention, about trying to defer or avoid future costs for treatment or future costs for having people in the hospitals and so on. The whole idea of this program is to reduce those costs in the future to do the upstream work so that we have positive impacts downstream. Thank you.

Mahsi cho, Mr. Speaker. We’ve had many discussions about mental health and addictions since I’ve become the Minister of Health and Social Services. This action plan has been in the works for quite some time. The plan right now, as a department, we’re seeing something with a shorter time frame that’s more of an action plan rather than a strategy is something that we need in order to start to move forward and try to make some progress in the mental health and addictions field. This doesn’t mean that we will stop working on mental health and addictions at the end of three years. It is hoped, and...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I don’t know the exact time. From what I understand, the individual must remain sober for some time and also attend counselling prior to going into treatment. However, there has been a bit of a call from communities that this thing should be shortened and should be reduced, that when an individual’s time has come where they recognize that they have to go to treatment right now, that should be available. We are actually looking at that to see what type of success rate we would have if we were to do that instantly. That it is the minute the individual wants to go to...

Mahsi cho, Mr. Speaker. Today is language day. I will be doing a part of my Member’s statement in Chipewyan.

Mr. Speaker, today I would like to pay tribute to Alphonse King of Fort Resolution. He’s also known as “The Fonze.” Alphonse King was born April 5, 1949, and passed away June 8, 2012. He was only 63 years old. He died of terminal cancer.

[English translation not provided.]

Alphonse King spent the first quarter of his life in Rocher River. Like many people from Rocher River, Alphonse had to move to Fort Resolution when the school in Rocher River burnt down. He was a trapper and he had...

I know that the community counselling services are available to everyone in the communities, so also available to everyone in Yellowknife. These members that are going there, we could maybe provide some information to them, advising them that counselling for addictions is available near where the day shelter is, and that perhaps that would be a method of informing them, and also getting them to go take counselling within the city. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I can’t come up with all of the services that would be offered in the shelter, off the top of my head, but I can say that the day shelter is a project that has a committee overseeing any of the projects and so on. The committee has members from the YK Health and Social Services, BHP Billiton, City of Yellowknife and our department. We can work on putting something together and provide to the Member that we can lay out what services could be offered to the individuals that frequent that shelter. Thank you.

As is across the country, the NWT recognizes that the seniors population will be growing quickly, and it’s been an issue, I think, for at least 25 years when they started to do the projections and recognizing that. For the Department of Health and Social Services, we have some senior citizens consultants to consult about what type of rehabilitation services are going to be needed, the extent of what type of services will be needed within the department. Aside from that we are funding the NWT Seniors’ Society. We give them now close to $200,000 a year for them to work with the Seniors’ Society...