Mr. Chairman, again, just to build on what I was saying earlier, when you have initiatives by communities, where a group of people might be very concerned about the number of young people who are going

through the courts, there is a way in which they can deal specifically with youth, with young offenders, by setting up a committee that says that is all they are going to deal with.

That is what we have in Fort McPherson. It is possible, if the communities feel they want to take an even larger role, by dealing with, not only children that are young offenders, but also deal with their parents, and the adult offenders of the community. It is taking more of a family, and community approach to dealing with offenders. The community is taking a role in the sentencing and the decisions of the justice system, when dealing with parents and adults in the community.

It has been said many times that young people, for instance, will not be very eager to lay a complaint against an adult who has supplied them with alcohol, because it is not that they force feed them the stuff, the young people get it because they want to get it. I do not think there is any great inclination toward anger at these people for doing it, unless there is some tragedy involved. I do not know that a great deal of time could be spent on that. Again, dealing with the source of the problem, that probably is where I would be interested in working. I do not want to spend a great deal of time saying, "what can I do to get young offenders to lay complaints about who is supplying them with drugs, or who is enticing them to commit crimes, or who is encouraging them to drink, and generally get into mischief and misbehave." Rather, I would not want to ignore it. I would say that I would like to spend a great deal more time trying to deal with the source, and how the justice system deals with them. If we do that, then we just let the court sentence them, and send them off to correctional facilities, you are just going to continue. I think if we get community people to work with young offenders, to work with judges and the court system to take a more caring, I think, supportive role for these young people, then I think we should see a decrease in the number of times these young people come back into conflict with their communities, and with the justice system. If we also take an approach where the community should also take responsibility for the parents, and the adults, who also break laws, then surely, we would have good returns for our efforts there as well.

Again, sending many adults to jail, or fining them, does not do anything. It just puts a dent in their pocket, and in many cases, it has been said, that it is a relief for some adults to be sent to Yellowknife where they can have their own bed without worrying about it. They are absolutely dead certain they are going to have three meals a day, they are not going to be cold, and they are not going to have to worry about anything. There is no stress, the way some of them live in the communities, the kind of lifestyle that some of the adults lead, they can only say that it is a nice break, and I am going to be gone for a couple of months.

So, I think there is a real need to do some work in there, and I am quite anxious to get involved with communities that would take some initiative in this area.