Thank you, Mr. Chair. I definitely think the GNWT has a role to play with addressing our intoxication downtown and the homelessness that we are experiencing. However, I want to be clear and say that not everyone that you see downtown is homeless. That is a misperception. I personally have friends who I have known all my life, who actually work for my brother. When they come into town after diamond drilling, they are downtown intoxicated, so it is not only homelessness we are dealing with.

Intoxication is not okay. I grew up in this community. In the 1960s, when I was a young child, I could walk on this street. There was no pavement and no sidewalks. I want to tell people how far we have come in the last while, but there weren't the number of homeless people out there, and people weren't afraid to walk. We left our doors open. We stopped when vehicles were in trouble. We were very community-minded.

Yellowknife has changed. Yellowknife has mostly people from the south, now. There are very few Yellowknifers here. We have lost some of that community spirit, and hopefully we can work to gain that back.

With the public intoxication, that is not okay. That is a safety issue. Children, parents, women, and men should not be afraid to walk on our streets. We have a role. We work with the federal government on the RCMP, and we need to bump that services so that the RCMP are actually doing street patrols like they did many years ago.

The other thing, too, is if we are only building shelters, I have said that many times in Yellowknife, "Build it and they will come." These people, I would say, my guesstimate from 20 years working with the homeless women, probably over 90 percent of them are actually from the smaller communities. People love their children. It is not that people want their children to just disappear. If a person is stuck in addictions or mental health, and you don't have the support, at what point does a parent say that, you know, "My family isn't safe anymore. I need to take care of my other children." It is a hard choice for a parent to close the door and say, "My child has to leave because my other children are not safe."

The other thing is, when those people are ready to heal and stop their addictions, the best support they can have is their family and community to support them, because I have seen women in the shelter who fall off. They say, "I want to clean up," and then their friends say, "Have another drink."

When I was the Housing Minister, I focused on actually building shelters outside of the community. Minister Alfred Moses concluded them, so we had three homeless shelters, one in Behchoko, Fort McPherson, and Aklavik. I think that is quite advanced with wraparound supports. If we only build in Yellowknife, we are missing the boat. We need to build in all communities, so that people have a chance when they are ready to heal, and that the wellness and supports are there for them. Thank you, Mr. Chair.