Thank you. You know, when the Assembly puts together its list of priorities, this may be on there or this may not be on there, regardless, this is something that the government should be doing. It's one of the most basic services the government should provide, is ensuring that the people have a basic level of health. When you're suffering from mental health or addictions, you don't have that basic level of health.
This issue is cyclical. It will keep repeating itself unless we put an end to it, and it has ripple effects across the community and across generations. The government often focuses a lot on symptoms; we need to start focusing on causes. We talked a lot about investing. Well, if we invest in people, we can save money later on. If you want to look at it from a strictly financial point of view, this issue engages multiple departments; Housing, ECE through income assistance, Health and Social Services, Justice sometimes, and so what we need, and what I propose, is like a policy unit that is responsive to Cabinet and accountable to Cabinet that can put together a broad approach to fixing this.
Right now, we have Health with solutions, Housing does some things, but we need to have a program, a policy, a way of doing things that ignores the fact that we have all these different government departments. We need to say: how do we fix the problem? Not how can this department fix the problem, what can this department do to fix the problem, what can this department do. Then we need to implement that, and we need to make sure that it's actually working; and, if it's not, then we change it.
Those are the kinds of changes I'd like to make as Premier, so that there is more accountability and we don't just stand up in this House and say, yes, this is a problem. Obviously, it's a problem. We all know what a dire problem it is, but how are we going to change it? You know, we say we are concerned about it, but what changes are you going to make to how we do business? Because everyone has been concerned about it for a long time, so we need to change the way we do business.
Like we've all been saying, now, for days, partnerships; partnerships with Indigenous governments, partnerships with communities. Thank you, Mr. Speaker-elect.