Mr. Chairman, I don't know whether I would term it as lax controls, in this situation. Over a number of years, in terms of dealing with social assistance, we have been asked to try to work with the previous year's figures as if it were a controlling factor. It is a continuous desire for us to try to keep the social assistance down.

But the uptake on social assistance, as Members know, certain areas in the Northwest Territories do not have employment opportunities. They are less able to seek employment. I know that one region, where before there was very limited use of social assistance, now, because of the lack of job opportunities, more social assistance has been given out.

As well, although the figures are not all in, there are many, many, many young people, young women, or older children, having children -- those numbers are very, very high. Once a young lady has a child, there is an obligation to provide social assistance to this person. That number has vastly increased.

There are areas where we feel much more work has to be done. The only thing that I can really say that will help is to try to get to the communities, try to deal with the individual communities to bring more awareness on exactly what is happening in their communities on a global basis. We have no control over 67 births in Gjoa Haven in one year, or 72 in Arviat. Some of those young people are 13, 14, 15 years old and having children.

So we are in that blip, that is what I see when I move from community to community. That is obvious to my eyes and probably obvious to everyone else's eyes. In trying to deal with the Department of Education, Culture and Employment on investing in people, and all the programs, we are trying to pull that together to see if there are other ways that these young people, instead of relying on social assistance, can work themselves back into training, back into an educational program. But I know that it is extremely difficult when you are raising a little child with no means of male support for that child. A lot of the demands relate to that particular area of growth. The only way that we can try to meet the Minister of Finance's expectations to keep this figure down, is to try to deal with the communities on a very proactive basis, Mr. Chairman.