EdinburghNLP/nunavut-hansard-plusplus huggingface dataset:
My understanding is that it’s for patients who are currently in the facility at 534 and patients at Selkirk if the supports are in place at the new facility.
Mister Curley.
Mr. Chairman, the way I understand the programs that are running with respect to individuals with some mild to severe cases with respect to mental health, the less severe patients or clients from the health facility normally go to Igloolik.
Igloolik is one service of continuing care centres that they do treat not severe mental health illnesses or disabled individuals.
This facility, Tammaativvik, was really to relieve the old facility so that it can be modernized, it can be used as well as for counselling with substance addiction, handicaps, and so on.
As far as I know, Selkirk only serves very severe patients.
So how can they be repatriated?
If that is the case, then I would have to vote for a project that would be a Nunavut-wide facility. So this facility, Tammaativvik, will then become a Nunavut-wide facility. Is that correct?
All facilities in Nunavut, if an individual is eligible, if you’re a resident of Nunavut, I think you would qualify to go to any facility in Nunavut if that’s the determination of the health department and working with families.
Well, the information did not provide that.
Selkirk is a severe case treatment facility and it’s almost like a maximum-security facility and this facility, if it’s going to be repatriating some of the patients from that Winnipeg, Manitoba, facility, the location is not conducive to that kind of individual.
It sits right next door. Even some of the Members of the House indicated to us about a year ago that we would have to make that facility, which is important to renovate, that it should be made secure for students who are running around and using that access to come and go into that high school location.
So the minister appears to indicate that now this is a territorial-wide facility and the information is not sufficient to convince me that it will be a territorial-wide facility.
Most of the individuals who are being treated now at the old facility pretty much walk in and out and they use that current location to sleep and eat at that place and normally walk over to the Baffin hospital for treatment.
So will the minister provide more information to convince us that either this is a facility, Tammaativvik, to relieve the current facility there or now it is a territorial-wide facility?
I toured the proposed new facility with some of the officials from the Department of Health. I noted that it was near a high school. I also toured the 534.
I talked to some of the individuals in there, some of the patients. I was assured that the facility that’s the new facility would not pose any danger to any of the students.
In fact, it was discussed with the district education authority here in Iqaluit in 2010 and they had no issue it.
The information the minister provided doesn’t say that.
I appreciate the minister wanting us to just now approve that with new criteria.
It was raised in the House about a year ago, even less than that.
The facility would have to be secured a bit more because the access right now really is something that the minister is taking quite lightly, that there’s no risk.
If you’re repatriating patients from Manitoba, these are very secure, very seriously ill [individuals] with mental health illnesses.
So I need more information that one, it will be a territorial facility and it will be used to repatriate patients from other provinces.
If so, will the minister provide more information so that we can be voting on an item with the correct information?
I’m not quite sure what Mr. Curley is driving at.
He was the minister for three years; I’m the minister for three months.
The department is proposing to acquire the facility. The Government of Nunavut and all of us, as MLAs, have put a high priority on mental health in Nunavut.
As indicated earlier in my answers, people will be located in that facility if the support mechanisms are there to help them.
There are not going to be patients who are going to pose a danger to the community.
Obviously, people with severe disabilities and mental disabilities will probably need some more sophisticated, complicated help and that would probably be the help that they get down in Selkirk or other facilities.
Mr. Curley: Thank you. Mr. Chairman, the minister knows quite well that I support this project. I initiated the first set of criteria that were supported by most of the MLAs and so on.
The planning has been very important to establish a facility that could also help patients with substance abuse, to help with mental health programs needed, to make it ready for substance abuse programs and patients that would need services.
That has been my understanding.
Now, the new information the minister is providing is that it will used to repatriate patients from Selkirk who have very severe mental illnesses and it’s the only facility practically in Canada that handles people with very severe mental illnesses.
I’m trying to make sure that it is now going to be providing both types of people with illnesses. I always understood it to be that it will be used for people with mild mental illnesses and that is what I understood it to be.
So I’m not trying to do anything other than getting better information and accurate information.
I appreciate his concern for this facility and it’s important for the facility to support mental health and improving mental health and continuing mental health care in Nunavut.
Mr. Chairman, as I have already said, if the support mechanisms and programs are in place in the facility and the individuals who might be considered for the facility meet the profile and the facility can support them, then they would go there.
If they don’t meet the profile and they can’t be supported, they would be placed in another facility and more than likely, down south.
Mr. Curley: Final question.
You alluded and indicated to the committee here that it will be used to serve the patients repatriated from Selkirk. That will be one of the services that the facility will serve.
Am I correct in understanding you on that?
I again thank Mr. Curley for his question. Mr. Chairman, I personally don’t know any of the individuals at Selkirk.
I don’t know what their conditions are and what support they require.
As I said before, if this new facility is acquired and if they put programs in place and they have the staff there with the necessary qualifications to support people from Selkirk and they meet the qualifications, then certainly they would be considered for the facility.
I’m not saying that we’re going to open a new facility and suddenly bring 10 people from Selkirk. They have to be able to be supported by the people in the facility.
That’s usually how it works.
Chairman: Thank you, Minister Peterson. (interpretation) Are you done?
I just want to be clear in my comments that were in Inuktitut and I also want to explain. I have been in and visited and toured Selkirk before. There are various levels of mental illnesses that are there.
A lot of residents from Iqaluit go there sometimes for one month, two months, four months, six months, or a year, patients who are having mental health issues, such as bipolar or schizophrenic issues, and/or drug issues, that have related to them as becoming mental health.
There are varying degrees of patients there.
The Selkirk institute has a website that people can look at and take a look at the work that they’re doing.
They even take day patients from the area of Manitoba itself. They have different levels. Mind you, on the top floor, they do have the absolute severe cases.
At the bottom floor, they have day patients. A lot of people from Nunavut who do go down there are on the main floor. There are some who are on the other levels.
When a person is in a mental situation, they require the proper medicine. In Iqaluit, we don’t have the proper psychiatrists who will stay here for a month or more.
Because of that, they need to be in an institution like that so that they can be provided with the proper medicine to have proper daily lives like we do, when they have the proper medicine.
They are able to live the way we can as long as they have the proper medicine.
That is what I was talking about when I was referring to taking some of the patients away from Selkirk. I just wanted to have that as clarification.
Although I didn’t want to speak to this bill, I do want to make a comment. I want to support this bill.
For a very long time, Inuit leaders have kept saying that we should start having proper infrastructure.
If we can work and have infrastructure in Nunavut, then we should do so.
I am very proud of this proposal because we keep saying that when patients have to go out of the territory, it creates stress to the family and to the patient.
If we can provide support in our territory and if we have a support system, we should provide support to them.
This proposal, I believe, is essential.
I know that my colleague, Monica Ell, explained that there are different levels of mental illnesses in Selkirk.
I know individuals from my home community go to Selkirk and they return home.
I am very pleased now that patients will be able to go to a facility that is closer to home.
Also, I am glad on behalf of Nunavummiut that they will be able to stay in the territory if the facility can take them on.
At the time, I used to be a chair of the Divisional Board of Education when they wanted to construct the Baffin Correctional Centre.
At the time when the Ukiivik residence was a residential school for high school students, I was very concerned.
As a board for the Baffin region, we were quite concerned about that, but we had to trust the justice minister and his staff because we know that the correctional facility is right beside the residential school.
So that the people living around that facility won’t worry, I believe that when they consider this bill, they will be considering the fact that this proposed facility is quite close to the high school.
I believe the department will do everything and I know that we want to provide services in Nunavut for Nunavummiut.
I also believe that this proposed facility is going to be beneficial to Nunavummiut.
I’m in support of this bill and I initiated this. Listening to the explanation, we need to respond.
Mr. Chairman, what I’m trying to say to the minister is that if it’s going to become a real mental health facility for mild to severe cases, we need appropriate mental health workers and the program should be more detailed.
For the addictions services project, they have provided funding for abuse and drug treatment and they would combine it.
That was the proposal, but now we hear that this mental health treatment centre will be able to take on severe cases of mentally ill people and we need proper support.
I’m not opposed to that, but I’m requesting correct information from the minister. We have to provide correct information to the politicians.
I want the minister to further elaborate if this is going to be a mental health treatment centre. Patients with severe mental health issues are not all from the Baffin region. The minister had stated that we can repatriate patients from Selkirk to this new facility.
Hon. Keith Peterson: Mr. Chairman, I don’t know what I can say to reassure Mr. Curley. Ms. Ell and Mr. Enook said they support it.
I indicated earlier that it’s a new facility. They have to acquire it first. That’s the first step is to acquire it, then we work on renovating it, and then the individuals who operate it would develop the programs and policies to guide the operations.
It’s my understanding that they would be mostly patients with mild mental health difficulties and many of the folks who Ms. Ell described would be served.
I don’t know where Mr. Curley got this idea about severe.
All I said is some patients from Selkirk would be repatriated, but they would have to be able to be supported at the facility. We’re not going to be repatriating individuals with severe mental problems if they can’t be supported. They would be supported in the south.
We would be doing them a great disservice if we brought people up here that we couldn’t support. He knows that. He was the Minister of Health for three years.
Well, this is becoming a political debate and I don’t want to go into that.
I was merely trying to get some information from the minister, correct information, because the information provided to me while I was the minister that it would serve mild patients who are currently being treated by the hospital here, most of them day patients. They come and go for one week at a time.
I know the Winnipeg, Manitoba facility quite well.
Normally, and Monica is correct, they’re there for a month, two months, while they’re being assessed. It takes that long to get a mental health patient assessed by various doctors.
When they find a certain illness, they assign them to various parts of the province, but Selkirk is normally the first major location for assessment purposes. Some do take three months at a time.
I just want assurance that this will be a territorial-wide facility, as the minister has indicated to us.
That’s all I’m asking. I’m not opposing it.
Chairman: Thank you for your remarks, Mr. Curley.
I thank Mr. Curley for his question.
Mr. Chairman, I haven’t had an opportunity personally to tour the Selkirk facility.
I do try to tour the facilities that our department has relationships with or own.
I have been to the hospital in Yellowknife and the Larga home.
I have been to most of the facilities in Iqaluit, but I haven’t been to the Selkirk home. What I can tell you is that individuals who be served by this facility will be served by a facility that could support them.
I have no more names. Therefore, page 5.
Not Previously Authorized. Directorate. Total Directorate. $19,736,000. (interpretation) Do you agree?
Chairman: Total Department. Not Previously Authorized. $19,736,000. (interpretation) Do you agree?
Go to page 6. (interpretation ends) Community and Government Services. Capital.
Not Previously Authorized. Capital Planning. Total Capital Planning. $2,600,000.
My question concerns the $500,000 proposed for funding for the design of the new arena for Rankin Inlet.
The only reason I’m asking this question is because when the Government of Nunavut issues their supplementary appropriations, they do not attach substantiation sheets. If they did, it might have diffused a lot of the confusion that Mr. Curley was having earlier, maybe.
So I’m confident that the minister will recall that the Legislative Assembly did not approve similar funding requests last fall during our review of the 2012-13 capital estimates.
At the time, the information in the project’s substantiation sheets that the government provided to the MLAs about the project indicated that the scope would include much more than just an arena. The minister will also recall that Members of Legislative Assembly indicated that they would be prepared to support the funding request for a more basic arena.
For the public record, can the Minister of Finance or the Minister of Community and Government Services provide some details concerning the revised scope of work for the Rankin Inlet Arena project?
Hon. Keith Peterson: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank Mr. Rumbolt for the question.
Mr. Chairman, I have been assured that the $500,000 would be for the design of a new arena in Rankin Inlet.
I thank the minister for his confirmation.
The only other question I’ll have on this is in the future, it would be helpful for all MLAs if the government would provide project substantiation sheets when it brings forward supplementary appropriations for new capital projects.
Will the Minister of Finance commit to ensuring that these are provided to all MLAs in the future when we are asked to approve capital spending in supplementary appropriations?
Mr. Chairman, I don’t think the government has a problem with providing that information.
So he doesn’t think they don’t. So that means that he will provide the information in the future.
I see Mr. Rumbolt is not as sleepy as I am.
Yes, Mr. Chairman, we can provide that information.
Therefore, page 6.
Capital Planning. Total Capital Planning. $2,600,000.
I have no problem in supporting item 2 of this particular page.
I only have a question pertaining to the title. About a year ago, I think, the government came up with a plan to replace aging tank farms across the territory.
Is this part of the plan?
Mr. Chairman, the government is continuously trying to upgrade our tank farms.
This particular tank farm, I think, was built in 1976. It has undergone some upgrades over the years, but it has reached its capacity. So we continue to upgrade all of our facilities; they have to meet the codes.
We will try again.
Not Previously Authorized. Capital Planning. Total Capital Planning. $2,600,000. (interpretation) Do you agree?
Not Previously Authorized. $2,600,000. (interpretation) Do you agree?
Capital Appropriation. $23,036,000. (interpretation) Do you agree?
For Bill 27 to proceed smoothly, (interpretation ends) Bill 27, Supplementary Appropriation (Capital) Act, No. 1, 2012-2013.
Chairman: Clause 4 (interpretation) with the Schedule on page 2. (interpretation ends) Schedule.
Total Supplementary Appropriation. $23,036,000. (interpretation) Do you agree?
Chairman (interpretation): Go back. (interpretation ends) Clause 4 (interpretation) with the Schedule.
Chairman (interpretation): Very good.
My colleagues, do you agree to Bill 27 as a whole?
Chairman: Do members agree, pursuant to Rule 62(2), that Bill 27 can be immediately placed on the orders of the day for third reading?
We still have other items to deal with, so please be patient.
We have another item to deal with.
Bill 28 – Write-off of Assets Act, 2011-2012 – Consideration in Committee
I am pleased to present Bill 28, Write-off of Assets Act, 2011-2012.
Bill 28 is for the write-off of 12 housing units by the Nunavut Housing Corporation.
Nine of these units are beyond economic repair and three other buildings burned down.
Eight of the buildings beyond economic repair are in Iqaluit; one is in Kugaaruk.
Of the three buildings lost to fire, one is in Iqaluit, one is in Arctic Bay, and one is in Chesterfield Inlet.
He made his opening comments on Bill 28. (interpretation ends) Does the Chair of the Standing Committee on Legislation have comments?
As Co-Chair of the Standing Committee on Legislation, I am pleased to make some brief opening comments as we begin consideration of Bill 28, Write-off of Assets Act, 2011-2012.
The standing committee recognizes that the purpose of the legislation is to write off a number of housing units that are beyond economic repair or have been destroyed by fire. The standing committee has no objections to the intent of the legislation.
The standing committee notes that that the 2010-11 Annual Report of the Nunavut Housing Corporation, which was tabled in the Legislative Assembly on February 21, 2012, includes information regarding these write-offs.
It doesn’t look like there is.
Go to Bill 28 in your white binders. (interpretation ends) Bill 28, Write-off of Assets Act, 2011-2012.
Chairman (interpretation): Go to Schedule on page 2. (interpretation ends) Total. $370,100. (interpretation) Do you agree?
Chairman (interpretation): Do you agree with (interpretation ends) clause 1, (interpretation) including the Schedule?
Chairman (interpretation): Thank you. (interpretation ends) Do members agree to Bill 28 as a whole?
Chairman (interpretation): Thank you. (interpretation ends) Do members agree, pursuant to Rule 62(2), that Bill 28 can be immediately placed on the orders of the day for third reading?
Chairman (interpretation): Thank you, my night owls.
Minister Peterson, do you have any opening comments on Bill 29?
Bill 29 – Write-off of Assets Act, No. 1, 2010-2011 – Consideration in Committee
I am pleased to present Bill 29, Write-off of Assets Act, No. 1, 2010-2011.
Bill 29 addresses a write-off of $703,288 for the evaporation and shrinkage of petroleum products within the Petroleum Products Division of the Department of Community and Government Services.
Does the Chair of Standing Committee on Legislation have comments?
As Co-Chair of the Standing Committee on Legislation, I am pleased to make some brief opening comments as we begin consideration of Bill 29, Write-off of Assets Act, No. 1, 2010-2011.
The standing committee has no objections to the intent of the legislation, which is to write off petroleum products inventory lost due to evaporation and shrinkage.
Mr. Chairman, as members will recall, Bill 43, Write-off of Assets Act, 2010-2011, was considered by the Legislative Assembly in October of 2010 during the Second Session of the Third Legislative Assembly.
This bill wrote off petroleum products inventory lost due to evaporation and shrinkage during the 2008-09 and 2009-2010 fiscal years.
At that time, Members of the Legislative Assembly posed a number of questions to the Minister of Community and Government Services during the proceedings of the Committee of the Whole concerning such issues as the rates of evaporation and shrinkage in different communities.
The standing committee would encourage the minister to consider reporting annually to the Legislative Assembly on the operations of the Petroleum Products Division of the department, and that such reporting include detailed information concerning evaporation and shrinkage rates in different communities for different classes of petroleum products.
The Standing Committee on Legislation recommends the passage of Bill 29 to all members.
Are there any general comments regarding the opening comments?
We will now proceed to Bill 29 in your white binders. (interpretation ends) Write-off of Assets Act, No. 1, 2010-2011.
Chairman: Schedule 2 on page 2.
Total. $703,288. (interpretation) Do you agree?
Chairman: Clause 1 (interpretation) with Schedule 2.
Chairman: Do members agree, pursuant to Rule 62(2), that Bill 29 can be immediately placed on the orders of the day for third reading?
Chairman: Thank you so much!
We have completed the section for the Minister of Finance. I would like to ask the minister if he has closing remarks.
I would like to thank yourself and the committee for their excellent questions tonight. You commented them being late owls.
It has been a long day. We have made a lot of good decisions tonight that will benefit Nunavummiut.
I would just like to take the opportunity now, Mr. Chairman, to thank some individuals in town here: Mr. Bernie Schmidt at the hospital, Monte Kehler, Dr. Sandy Macdonald, who toured me around the facility and showed me all the existing facilities in town, and Deputy Minister Peter Ma.
I would like to thank the Government of Canada for the funding for the CT scanner under the Patient Wait Times Guarantee Fund.
I would like to thank all of the ministers, of course, for being here with us tonight to help answer questions when I needed any help. I would like to also thank my Deputy Minister, Mr. D’Arcy, for his staying up late. I think it’s well past his bedtime.
Of course, I want to thank all of our staff who have worked very hard to put all of this together.
I would just like to give a little shout-out to Mayor Madeleine Redfern, who was on Twitter tonight. Several of us were assisted with her. She went out and got us some Tim Horton’s coffee, so that’s why I have the advantage of being a little bit more alert at this time of night.
So thank you, Mayor Madeleine.
Thank you, Chairman and Committee of the Whole.
Thank you to your witness. (interpretation) Sergeant-at-Arms, please escort the witnesses out.
This will be the last item for us to deal with. (interpretation ends) I would now like to ask Mr. Speaker if he has opening remarks on Bill 34.
Bill 34 – An Act to Amend the Integrity Act – Consideration in Committee
Would you like me to proceed right away or do you want me to wait for a little while?
Mr. Chairman, first, I would like to start off by thanking whichever member dropped their Fisherman’s Friend on the floor over there. Whoever has lost them, I found them and I’m glad I found them since I won’t be coughing this time sitting up here.