Thank you. One of the issues that was alluded to or mentioned yesterday was the awareness and concern of known cases of people with the HIV virus and the concern about making the public aware of who and where these known cases are. Why is the system not allowed, at this stage, to disclose names of infected persons in communities or regions? Is there some law or act which prevents the department from doing this?

Thank you. Madam Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will let Dr. Gilchrist respond to that.

Dr. Gilchrist.

In response, Mr. Chairman, to Mr. Koe's question, there are probably two or three different reasons for not proceeding with the usual disclosure of the names of infected people. The first one relates to legislation, which prohibits the identification of people with venereal diseases and sexually transmitted diseases. Secondly, is with regard to professional ethics, that professional nurses, doctors and physicians are, in theory, ethically bound not to discuss their patients' conditions or give their patients' identification to anyone else. A third reason is, with regard to AIDS and HIV, it has been difficult to get a handle on the real number of infected people. One of the concerns has been, and it has been demonstrated in many other places, that people are afraid to be identified. They do not, therefore, often come forward quickly for fear they will be identified. If one proceeds to identification, or even if people perceive there is a possibility of identification, it tends to make, in experience elsewhere, people not prepared to come for testing. That means we end up with a situation where we know less than we know now.

A further reason is that up until the present, certainly in terms of the people who we know about having this infection, their behaviour has been, by and large with one or two exceptions, superb. They have certainly put no one else at risk. So, to identify them would be very damaging, or could be very damaging, without any protection being provided. Thank you.

Thank you. General comments. Mr. Gargan.

Mr. Chairman, those were the four reasons why people's names should not be disclosed. Are there any programs right now -- I know we pass laws for compulsory education, for example. Is it possible to have compulsory testing? Can we initiate something like this up here? We have 52,000 people, we are not talking about millions of people. I wonder if that possibility it there.

Thank you. Madam Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will let Dr. Gilchrist respond to that.

Dr. Gilchrist.

There are a number of different reasons why compulsory testing can take place and does take place. In other words, if one is aware of someone who may be infected, who appears to be infected, and there is some reason to expect is infected, and has not been tested, then that person could be compelled to go for testing. To test everyone presents a number of problems. One is that the test, even though it is a fairly good test, does not become positive immediately after the person is infected. There are, in fact, some people who have been known to go for more than a year without their test turning positive even though they were infected. So, the test is weak in that sense.

Another problem with testing is that if you test someone today and find out they are negative, that does not mean they will not become positive tomorrow. I am not sure then, how often one would go for testing. That is certainly a problem, you have to look at the frequency in which that would need to be done.

Another problem related to that is the cost. It is not a very costly test, but it is running $17 or $18 for the first test, and if you repeat the test the price goes up. How often would you need to repeat the test?

Another reason is once you have determined that someone is infected, then what do you do? They can remain infected for 20 years. Probably many of the cases of illness we are seeing now are people who were infected a long time ago. Knowing someone is infected does not really help you to do anything with that person because they are going to be around for such a long time.

Another problem with testing is that, even though the results which are going to be wrong are small, it can be fairly devastating. The more tests you do, the higher the possibility of an occasional bad test. You can, therefore, expect that people who are, in fact, negative will sometimes have a positive test. Those people, of course, will have a disaster in their lives.

Another reason for the problem with testing is simply the movement of our people. People go back and forth, people come from the south, so many people move around that even if you were to test everyone who is here today, we know the population tomorrow is going to be different.

I think in purely practical terms, testing is not an answer to this infection. There is probably also a bit of a negative in the sense that when people know someone is infected they seem to want to concentrate on being careful with that person, but not with the other people. That also is, of course, a big risk. There are circumstances under which testing can and should be done, but to do compulsory testing for everyone seems to have a great many difficulties as a possibility.

Thank you. The honourable Member for Deh Cho.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have been listening for a while yesterday and today with regard to this whole issue of AIDS. However, I have not heard anything positive with regard to why this discussion is taking place. What is the purpose of it? If it is to make public aware? The public is listening to this kind of conversation with no direction. I do not know what the purpose of it is.

On the other hand, you talked about professional ethnics. I would also like to touch a bit on human ethnics too. We have a situation in which this sickness is multiplying. As you suggested yesterday, we may have 11, but it could be very well that we have 211. Possibly by the year 2010 we will have eliminated ourselves from the face of the earth if we continue to hide and protect the people who have AIDS, and not let the other people who are not infected be protected. I do not know where to go from here, Mr. Chairman. With no answers, I do not know how we can address it.

The other thing too is that we have done things like put condoms in the bathrooms in the schools and possibly even sending strong messages to the students that sex is all right as long as you practice safe sex. There is a moral issue, which I think even clergymen should be addressing.

When I was growing up, I grew up with strict parents. Residential schools were strict with regard to boys and girls. Even the dress code reflected that. I came to Yellowknife in 1963 when they had a flood in Fort Simpson. The girls had dresses down to their ankles, twisting away.

We have not addressed that at all. We have not sent anything to the young people regarding the moral issue. I do not know if we require stricter ways of dealing with the young people, but if we keep talking about AIDS as a symptom and do not address it as human behaviour, we are not doing any justice to anyone by discussing it. There has not been any positive responses I have received from the witnesses or the Minister with regard to this issue. Everything looks bleak, blank and grey. I feel hopeless sitting here trying to find an answer, and I am sure the witnesses are doing the same thing. I think we should do a bit more than just discuss it, I think we should be doing something with regard to human ethics, too.

Thank you. Madam Minister, you can delegate your responses to your staff. It is your discretion.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. These are the kinds of comments which our department is seeking from this Assembly, such as moral issues, et cetera. We make sure we are not promoting sex. AIDS is a disease for which there is no cure. If we are going to try to make an attempt to deal with the disease, then I think it is important that the leaders get involved in the discussions, even if we do not have immediate solutions at hand. One of the things which could be done is to target the schools and provide sex counsellors for high school students. It was available at the residential school I attended, but I do not know if it was available at the residential school you attended, Mr. Gargan. These are a few ideas which we can throw back and forth. That would help the department in addressing this problem. It has only been a few years that this Assembly has been informed about AIDS. If you compare it to the campaign for smoke-free work places, it took ten years for some people to quit smoking. We are targeting to try to change peoples' habits, but we are not going to see any immediate changes, as with smokers. However, I am seeking ideas and suggestions from Members because we need to make the public aware that this disease is increasing among our population. Thank you.

Thank you. Mr. Gargan.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the response the Minister has given me with respect to counsellors. To suggest that we have counsellors in the schools, suggests that we are promoting sex, and that these counsellors should counsel the young people before they get into it. I am not looking for patch-up answers. I am looking for something beyond that. It has to be done in the open. It cannot be done behind closed doors, one on one. It has to be something which we, even as Members, should be addressing to the schools. To do it as an individual department will not work. It has to be done with the people who are on the Executive, also. Everyone of us have responsibilities as politicians.

Mr. Chairman, a couple of weeks ago, under Statistics Canada, there was a survey done with regard to how many people get married in the Northwest Territories. On the national average the Northwest Territories is rock bottom. People are not getting married. Why is that? Are we sending the wrong kind of messages to our young people? Those are the kinds of questions we should be asking ourselves and how we might be able to address it. Perhaps AIDS will then take care of itself.

Thank you. Madam Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. To clarify myself with regard to providing sex education in schools, I did not mean we should promote sex. Sex education consists of films on diseases which are sexually transmitted. That could open a person eyes that they are at risk if they are active. That is what I meant with regard to sex education. It is not promotion. It is making the young people aware that there are diseases which are sexually transmitted. Many of these children do not know that there is such a thing. Thank you.

Thank you. Mr. Gargan.

I misunderstood the Minister. I thought the Minister indicated that we should have sex counsellors in the schools. That was what I thought. Thank you.

Thank you. Are there any general comments on Tabled Document 91-12(3), Northwest Territories AIDS Project - Review? Mr. Lewis.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is unfortunate we do not have more Members in the House today. In order to respond to some of the issues which other Members have raised, it is my understanding that we have decided to spend some time on this item because it was one identified by the department that was causing them some difficulty and some frustration. They needed to find some way of giving a better focus to the problem, trying to find ways in which perhaps more policy direction could be developed, and to involve more people in the problem than simply the officials and the care givers. That is why we decided to spend some time discussing these two documents. It would be my expectation that, maybe not today, but next week in formal session after having listened to the discussion and read the papers, that we will come up with a formal motion in the House which will, at least, give some idea of how we think the condition could be improved in dealing with people who have HIV.

Mr. Chairman, the information which we have been given gives us some cause for alarm. I would like to ask a few questions.

With regard to the information we were provided with, about 1,000 NWT residents did, in fact, contract a sexually transmittable disease. This indicates that those 1,000, who were infected, were at risk also of being infected with HIV, and that 1,000 may be a small number of the total population who, because of whatever conduct they engage in, were also at risk. Out of 57,000 people, 1,000 people have either contracted gonorrhoea or chlamydia, a fairly significant statistic. Is this more or less consistent with the general population of the country?

Thank you. Madam Minister.