Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Ballantyne's comments are very appreciated by me and by my deputy, and I am aware of the stats that we have with violence in the NWT and the child sexual abuse.
The awareness was made public back in the middle of the 1980s. It is quite acceptable now to openly talk about sexual abuse. So there has been a snowballing effect as a result of public awareness that it is not acceptable to sexually abuse a child or, for that matter, sexually abuse an adult.
I don't have the numbers to back me up but, hopefully -- I am being optimistic about this -- in the years to come, as a result of public awareness on family violence, which includes sexual abuse, we are going to start to see some changes in behaviour within our population in our communities. Up until such time as the behaviour changes, I think we will continue to have problems on our hands.
Mr. Ballantyne encouraged the department and I to work closely with the Minister of Justice, and we have begun our talks on how to grapple with the violence that a lot of people face in our northern communities. So, something is being done.
Also, I am being optimistic about this because of the reorganization of the department and better utilizing our resources within the communities and providing more support and training to the community mental health workers and counsellors. I think that slowly we will be able to deal with a lot of the problems that we face today. Thank you.