Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Being on the Social Programs committee, we have been concerned from the start about slippage and not being able to meet the targets we have. I would be interested in knowing where we anticipate finding this money. If it is going to be taken from somewhere, where would that be? That is my concern. I don't know if the Minister can answer that. If the Minister can't answer it, I will just make it a comment. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I do have a question on this. When we speak of core funding at the same level, I wonder if the Minister might be able to tell me what we are talking about in dollars.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We keep hearing about a shortage of funding. I am not on the Social Programs committee, but one thing I have not heard adequately addressed yet is how much of the funding that we could be spending on facilities in the North are we spending on facilities in the South. We talk about repatriation, but I don't see much of it happening. In my opinion -and I could be wrong on this -- at this point in

time, he is paying lip service to repatriation and we are spending millions of dollars in southern institutions. So when you ask where the money is going to come from, I would suggest the money is going to come from not paying to send people out to really expensive facilities in southern Canada. I support, as I think this government does, people receiving treatment in their own regions and communities.

We talk about community empowerment and we talk about people dealing with their own problems in their own ways. I would say that providing funding to such a facility has got to be in keeping with what this government is saying at this time. Until we know exactly what we are spending in southern institutions, I don't know how anybody could answer the question of where the money is going to come from, but I would suggest that would be a good place to start. Thank you.

As it sits right now, they are funding institutions around the North and southern institutions that have yearly contracts. This is the only facility that operates under funds that are allocated under programs such as noninsured health benefits, which is a federal program for status and Inuit people. Because of that, this is the only program that has an opportunity to look at the family unit as an individual group. In our communities, I grew up with suicide all around me. I saw my best friend with his head blown off. I packed kids to the hospital with their faces blown off. Yet, people don't seem to worry about those people. They are more concerned about where we are going to get our money from. We are sending people to southern institutions at a cost of $40,000 per person. That works out to 10 people at $400,000. No one has a problem with that. We just approved a budget where we are funding southern institutions. We have been sending people to Poundmakers and to Henwood.

We are talking about empowering communities and taking over authority for the North, yet you don't see that with regard to this budget. They are just given the crumbs to administer. If you look at the cost of wages and benefits and O and M costs of running the Department of Health and Social Services, they don't have any problem spending the money at that level. When it comes down to dealing with people and trying to get them back into society ... I just mentioned that an old lady passed away in McPherson this weekend. That was her grandson who ran over her. How is he going to deal with it? He backed over his grandmother and the poor guy is in jail because they are scared he is going to kill himself. What do you do in that case?

You all seem to have no problem approving a few million for docks and a few million for other institutions, but when it comes to a moral and health issue that deals with people's lives, you are willing to take kids away from them and throw people in jail. You are all backing off and saying we don't know where we are going to get the money from. Who is going to pay the $500 a day to incarcerate a person? Who is going to pay $1,000 a month to put a kid in someone's home? Who is going to take care of those families when they are broken up? What do you have in place for that? Nothing. This is the only program in the North we have that is directed at that problem. Yet, when it comes down to it, it is hush-hush.

So for those people who know what it is like to live with death around them and deal with people's lives in general because of alcoholism, sexual abuse and things like that, this is the program for you. I am saying it because I went through it. Nine of my best friends blew their heads away. Three of them I saw, personally, and took them to the hospital. I have seen people die of alcoholism. We are now finally seeing some results and people here seem to be scared for a simple operation. We can spend $40,000 to send someone to Bellwood because they have a problem; but when it comes to a program like this that is going to cost under $2,000 a person, you have a major problem with it. There are 250 people on the waiting list to get into this program. Something is wrong with this picture.