EdinburghNLP/nunavut-hansard-plusplus huggingface dataset:
I know in my community, it was brought to my attention by some families that there’s a need for more homes and it would be interesting to know how you’re advertising to get more homes in the communities and how does the future look to having some group homes in some of these in communities.
As an example again, Kugluktuk, I’m just using that, it might be needed elsewhere.
It might be Pond Inlet, it might be your home community Itsivautaq, but I’m just using that as an example where it was identified a couple of years ago there was a need of more homes.
Because of the lack of homes the kids are sent out of the community which really hurts the families when they are separating them from their relatives, but if they were in the community that makes a big difference and more trying to resolve the problem within the family group.
But I guess just to the question; how is it handled today?
Are you notified or are you seeing the needs of more foster homes and how to try and get more foster homes in each community?
Over the past 12 to 14 months we’ve experienced a severe shortage of foster homes and foster families available to take children who are in need of those services.
Two things have happened Mr. Chairman.
There is a move underway to look at a foster family organization or group to review some of the procedures and policy planning and to provide support to foster families.
That’s outside the scope of the government, that’s actually an organizational body of volunteers.
At the same time we are reviewing amounts that we are paying foster families and we have also put in more money into the actual program itself in the budget.
But I would suggest to you that, Mr. Chairman there is a greater need for foster families and with some of the supports that we have put in place, logistically as well as administratively and now with the review financially, we should see an uptake of more care available, not only in this community but across Nunavut.
Mr. Havioyak: It’s good to hear that there is some planning and it’s on the go right now and like he said with the policy planning and trying to find more homes within the communities.
It’s good to hear that this department is doing something about this because it is badly needed.
Jumping to another subject, Nunavummiut hear from southern Canada, HIV/AIDS status.
There’s some control on it, but how can we let people know out in Nunavut saying yes it’s under control that there are prevention programs and how we can prevent it from spreading across Nunavut?
What are the things you are doing today in that area by programs and services in the HIV/AIDS issue I guess?
Mr. Chairman, the member raises a very serious issue in Nunavut.
The sexually transmitted rates in Nunavut for gonorrhoea and Chlamydia for example are seventeen times higher than the national averages.
That in itself is a shocking figure Mr. Chairman.
Sexually transmitted infections or STIs, are in the process right now as a department to expand our diagnostic as well as our screening by offering all patients the opportunity for hepatitis, HIV and syphilis testing as well as other STIs across Nunavut.
At the present time as an example Mr. Chairman, only five percent of clients willingly ask for an STI test when making an appointment here at the hospital in the Baffin for example.
We’re in the process of introducing procedures for regular follow up as well as trilingual educational posters on STIs and we’re also planning a pilot STI clinic.
The member may remember just recently during the Arctic Winter Games in partnership and co-operation with Pauktutiit we had joined together for the Arctic Winter Games safe sex messages where there were condoms, several thousand condoms that were distributed to athletes from across the different circumpolar countries participating in the Arctic Winter Games.
And myself, as you may remember Mr. Chairman, at one point dressed up as condom man and went around to different venues passing out condoms.
I believe that program itself was quite effective.
One of the sexually transmitted diseases Mr. Chairman, can be prevented; it’s a preventable disease and I don’t think we’ve had enough discussion on this issue not only in this House but in other public forums.
So I appreciate the member raising it.
We have put an expanded diagnostic as well as treatment programs in place. We have enhanced and brought forward increased early detection through PAP smears that are delivered not only in community health centres but also at the hospitals.
We also have some interesting data and I’ll just read one for you that we estimate that less than 50 percent of Chlamydia infections are present for treatment in Nunavut or in our patients.
It’s also important to point out too, while the member had asked this question, that Chlamydia infections alone, cause infertility as well as pelvic inflammatory disease as well as transmission possibilities during birth.
And that’s why it’s very important to have the opportunity for PAP smear screening. Especially in the early years and continuing when a person becomes sexually active.
I guess across Nunavut, there are some types of statistics, without names where you might have HIV/AIDS.
You know if I was the public out there and you hear about these diseases coming up north from the south, how rapidly it’s coming or I guess just the statistics, how many people might have it across Nunavut and so on.
Do you have that type of information that maybe people could hear or even myself?
Where in the future, that we can use in the House, use the statistics on how we can go about prevention and so on.
It’s interesting statistics to know.
Mr. Chairman, as I tried to point out earlier, I think it’s important for all the members of the House, as well as the public in Nunavut to remember that when you see rates of Chlamydia infection, Gonorrhoea infection that are seventeen times the national averages, then it goes to follow that other sexually transmitted diseases, such as HIV would also be similarly high.
And the reason why Mr. Chairman, that we are testing low for HIV, because as I said earlier, only 5 percent of people who are infected with a sexually transmitted disease ask for an HIV test because that is up to yourself.
That is your prerogative to ask for the test.
If 50 percent of people showing up for sexually transmitted diseases were tested for HIV, it may indeed follow that the rate would be considerably higher.
But when only 5 percent, so 5 out of 100 people, get tested for HIV, then the number remains low.
I would suggest to you Mr. Chairman, it’s safe to assume that HIV is present in any unprotected sexual encounter that members of the public at large are having.
And that is why the Government of Nunavut, through your Department of Health and Social Services, has been promoting safe sex and the usage of condoms during sex as one way to prevent HIV infection and other sexually transmitted diseases.
And I appreciate the member bringing that comment to the floor during this budget debate.
Mr. Nutarak (interpretation): I can direct questions to the minister at any time because we’re going to be having other days for meetings.
But there was one time that we talked about a men’s group.
Could the minister give us an update on what’s happening with the men’s association or the men’s group that we talked about in the earlier days?
Mr. Picco.  Hon. Ed Picco: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Chairman, maybe if the member could just clarify. I believe the member is asking about the men’s self help group that has been formed in some communities.
If that’s specifically what the member is asking, I’d like to get some clarification so I could try to answer your question.
Mr. Nutarak (interpretation): It was discussed on the radio for quite a long time when we were in the Fifth Session.
At that time the women’s groups were being funded by the government under the Department of Culture, Language, Elders and Youth and there was a lot of discussion on why there are no self help groups for men and why there are no shelters for men.
For example, if a woman goes to one of the shelters you cannot talk to the spouse at all as the facility is only for women and at that point we discussed the idea of possibly setting up men’s self help groups so that there would be equal support provided to both the women’s and the men’s groups and the problems that they face.
Could the minister give us an update on this issue?
The funding that the group receives from the Department of Culture, Language, Elders and Youth, I believe it’s the Status of Women’s Council.
They work in an advocacy role for women throughout Nunavut and are funded by the government.
There is not a similar organization for men and some of the discussion that has taken place over the past several months has been around the area of having some type of similar status of Men’s Council as it were.
And the member is correct again when he suggests that in many cases victims of abuse in communities, women are taken out of their communities and it seemingly seems that the counselling for the abuser is actually not in place.
One of the things we have been working on over the last several months Mr. Chairman, in our new mental health strategy which is part of this budget, is to look at an opportunity for having counsellors available on the ground to help both the victim and the abuser.
Mr. Nutarak (interpretation): I’m sure that it’s going to progress as the planning stages proceed.
And since there is going to be a family violence planning process going on, does that mean when facilities are built for treatment that we won’t need to be importing southern people to fill those positions to help our clients in need.
Is that under consideration?
No Mr. Chairman, that’s not what it means.
Mr. Chairman, over the last couple of days in the House we’ve had some good discussion and debate on the role of social workers and counsellors and over the past five years social workers’ roles have changed from being just, have changed in five years from, for example, writing social assistance or income support cheques, to that they don’t do that anymore because income support workers do that.
Social workers now pick up the legislative as well as the statutory requirements in many communities.
Member Williams on a couple of occasions has brought up the issue around what happens with the cross pollenization of a social worker and having to on one hand counsel a family and on the other hand having to for example apprehend children.
So what the government has done in the past three years is try to train more mental health workers or family counsellors at the community level.
Through Brighter Futures money for example, a hamlet could hire a unilingual Inuk person to be a counsellor and we have for example, several trained Inuktitut-only speaking community counsellors working right now that graduated from the program in Clyde River; for example, from Hall Beach, Arctic Bay, Resolute Bay, and Pond Inlet, who are either in training right now or actually going through that type of training.
So, we’re going to progress as the member has said with the issues around family violence and counselling and look outside of the box by incorporating Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit and having those types of specialist positions in place.
So I hope that helps address the question of the member. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I would like to ask, even though it’s not in the main estimates, but social work is mentioned a couple of times.
I would like to ask the minister how many social workers we have today that are doing probation and parole?
Mr. Chairman, I have that answer.
My associates on both sides of me believe that I don’t have it but I know I’ve seen it and having gone through psychiatric evaluation with Dr. Best who informed me at that time that I had a photographic memory as well as being a qualified speed reader, I know that I’m correct when I say I’ve seen it.
If the member will give us an opportunity, see I told you I saw it.
We have found it Mr. Chairman and moving right along here with the help of Mr. Iqaqrialu.
The update on the repatriation of community corrections services from health and the Department of Justice tells me that community probation officers have been hired and trained by Justice and have assumed from the social workers in the following communities, Iqaluit, Cambridge Bay, Rankin Inlet, Arviat, Baker Lake, Kugluktuk and Pond Inlet.
The Pond Inlet worker will also manage the community corrections for Arctic Bay.
That’s the numbers that I have available at this time.
I did not ask that question.
My question was how many social workers today are doing probation?
Mr. Chairman, we believe the number is approximately 15 given the communities that have probation officers in them.
So we believe it’s around 15 at the present time, so a little more than half of Nunavut communities.
My question is that, what is taking place now between Justice and his department to make sure these communities will have probation officers so that the social workers will not do this work any more?
Mr. Chairman, I know the member has been involved not only in her former role, as a social worker, but also in her role with the government.
There are some chronological dates that I’d like to go through.
There was a decision in 1992 by the GNWT to transfer corrections services from Social Services to Justice.
Then in the following year, the Department of Justice assumed the management of adult and correctional facilities for youth and through the regional, setting up youth justice committees and justice committees at communities.
Then there was an MOU signed to try to alleviate some of the work of the social workers doing some of this work.
In 1997 and 1998, the Yellowknife government at that time put new monies in place for Justice so that training and staff support for the transfer of those positions from social workers to community probation officers would begin.
When the Nunavut Government took over in 1999-2000 the Department of Justice did include that in their budget and that was the first time we did a development of community corrections supervision services.
At the present time Mr. Chairman, the Department of Health and Social Services is continuing to work with the Department of Justice to see the transferring of more of this responsibility from social workers to the community parole or probation officers and there are also more transfers that will take place this spring, the spring of 2002.
So basically that’s the chronological sequence of what has happened and what is actually happening and what we intend to do is to continue with the process.
And the member makes again a good point that it is not acceptable to have the social worker having to do not only the counselling for the offender but also the apprehension in some cases.
It’s good to hear that this process is continuing and that we will see some of the probation officers or social workers not doing this work in the near future and I think that’s very welcome by these workers in our communities.
Another question that I want to ask even though it’s not in here, my colleague Mr. Havioyak has mentioned it, is foster homes.
We see a lot of, last two years, two to three years more and more families are taking their own family members as foster parents, to foster their own nieces and nephews or grandchildren.
With Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit that used to happen a lot but they didn’t get paid.
So when that happens if the family that is fostering children is on social assistance, I’m not sure if this minister could answer this, but can, okay, I’ll go back a little bit.
The family member who is fostering children will get paid a per diem through foster care programs but they are family members, their aunts and uncles or grandparents, this is happening today in all of our communities.
And we also understand to look at ways to keep the child in the community instead of sending the child out to a strange family, that’s very good.
Have they looked at, should the family members who are fostering children be getting paid, or sometimes are they getting paid through social assistance by adding the child that is there instead of paying foster parent rates.
I hope I’m clear.
Mr. Chairman I believe, it’s my understanding that if for example, an aunt or an uncle is in a position where they are able to provide foster care for a child that they would be compensated for that foster child.
It is also my understanding Mr. Chairman that the foster care payments are made outside of the regular income support.
So that when someone is on income support, they have to declare the money they receive above and beyond the amount for the foster care rate.
That’s my understanding of it as of today.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.’
Chairperson (interpretation): Ms. Williams would you like to continue?
I would like to ask a question in regards to the foster parents.
They are given very good support and the social workers go visit the homes and that’s the usual procedure that the social worker follows.
Perhaps, if your department has started or even initiated the discussion of an association for foster parents so that foster parents can communicate with each other throughout Nunavut, this would allow them another avenue of support, especially having their own children to take care of and foster children to take care of on top of that.
They try really hard to do it properly and they work very hard to teach the foster child some values that they are parenting and they have huge responsibilities.
I was wondering if your department is willing to consider starting up a group or an association of foster parents.
Mr. Chairman, not only will the Department of Health and Social Services be interested in supporting a group, we have in the mental health strategy monies already budgeted to actually help finance and fund a foster parents organisation in Nunavut following on the request of the member from Kugluktuk about seven months ago as well as some of the suggestions that had been made by the Standing Committee on Health.
So we have followed up on that and we have budgeted in the mental health strategy, dollars to facilitate and help set up a foster parents’ organisation.
Just to jog your memory in regards to the minister’s opening comments, I just want to inform the members that they can ask questions to the minister’s opening comments and then we’ll go on to the main estimates.
I just wanted to remind the members, we’ll go onto the pages of the operations and maintenance Main Estimates for the Department of Health and Social Services, but I’m reminding the members that they can ask questions in regards to the minister’s opening comments.
Mr. Iqaqrialu (interpretation): Very briefly, Mr. Chairman, I’ll ask a question.
I would like to make an additional question related to the one made by my colleague from Tunnuniq.
In regards to the men’s self help group, at least in my community, we have already started the men’s self help group in the community of Clyde River.
But I need further clarification too.
If the other communities are trying to establish such groups, have you have assisted those communities trying to establish these self-help groups?
Mr. Chairman, self help groups at the community level are done through the co-operation, as well as being facilitated by the communities themselves.
The Department of Health and Social Services hasn’t gone in and set up self-help groups in communities.
But they are a result, as the member just indicated, from the community of Clyde River, there has been a group set up on recommendations for example, Mr. Chairman, from the health committee at the community level.
Where there is a request Mr. Chairman, for resources, logistic support, administrative support, to set up a group similar to what the member has referred to, then Mr. Chairman, the department would be in a position to try to help facilitate that.
So the answer would be, we would be willing to do that but we have not received this specific request to date from an individual community to set up a men’s self help group around the issues earlier discussed, like family violence.
As I mentioned about the doctors versus medivacs, I know this isn’t a new subject.
We talked about it last year.
When does the community, or larger communities, or any community for that matter, when are they eligible to get a doctor?
How do you determine when that community’s needs require a full time doctor?
How do you say for example this year or next year we’ll need a doctor.
Or another way to put it too, a plan for Nunavut communities, is there something in the planning stage where you are working towards each community having a doctor in the very near future I guess to bring down the medivac costs, I guess?
That’s how I see the medivac costs going down if we had staff in each community.
Can the minister touch on that area?
What’s the plan in the future for that?
Mr. Chairman here in Nunavut we have what’s called a primary health care delivery model.
What that means is that our primary health care is delivered in 90 % of the case by nurses.
Mr. Chairman, you may be surprised to know that many other jurisdictions in the other jurisdictions across the country would like to have that type of model because of the lower overhead to the system itself Mr. Chairman.
At the same time Mr. Chairman, at the current time, specifically to the member’s question, the department is reviewing the staffing mix at our best practices division, through operations, to look at the total staffing mix at the community level, for example a mixture of primary health care nurse delivery, do we need more psychiatric nurses for example in communities, what’s the opportunity for having a greater presence of general practitioners and so on.
That review is occurring right now Mr. Chairman, within the department and I would hope to be able to bring back something concrete to the Standing Committee that the member is a member of, hopefully sometime in the fall on the review of that staffing mix.
Chairperson (interpretation): Are there any further questions?
I would just like to remind the members that we have only five minutes.
After five minutes the interpreters and the Sergeant-At-Arms will have supper in Tuktu boardroom in five minutes and the Members and table officers will be eating in the Nanuk room eating polar bear meat.
We’ll have a break for less than one hour for supper.
Since there are no further questions we’ll go on to the pages.
Page 10-5.
We’ll approve this at the end of the department.
We can move onto page 10-5.
Mr. Nutarak (interpretation): Under the Department of Health and Social Services the budget has increased approximately 27%.
What’s the 27% increase for?
Hon. Ed Picco: I’m just going to get the actual numbers and a list of the base increases to date, which also includes Mr. Chairman, as the member knows, the increase in the base adjustment.
So the total increase and total adjustments are as follows.
There is a base adjustment of 21 million dollars which makes up the 27% which includes the 21 million dollars that was mentioned earlier in the supplementary appropriation.
There is also extra dollars available in the forced growth or new initiative proposals of the department and there is an extra 5.8 million dollars which includes the Collective Agreement adjustment and that’s from the negotiations of the NEU, the Nunavut Employees’ Union for the contract increase.
All together with the FMB approval, the forced growth new initiative approval, as well as the 21 million dollars base adjustment, the total amount is the 31 million 869 thousand dollars or the 27% that the member had asked earlier about.
Chairperson: Anything else? Mr. Nutarak.
Mr. Nutarak (interpretation): You said that we only had five minutes.
So I only have about one minute to ask questions, but I may not have time, so I would like break for supper.
Chairperson (interpretation): Okay, we will break for 35 minutes.
Thank you. We will be back at 25 to the hour.
>>House recessed at 5.56 p.m. and resumed 6.35 p.m.
Chairman (Mr. Irqittuq) (interpretation): Thank you for coming back.
We can begin from the first page.
We’re on page 10-5.
Any questions on that page?