Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, in the community I represent we are still not capable of delivering babies in a formal way. We have them occasionally by circumstance as opposed to good planning. Normally the expectant mothers have to go to Hay River or Yellowknife. This is an outstanding issue for the community I represent and has been for a number of years. I have raised it in this House before and it has been constantly brought to my attention in Fort Smith. We finally have movement on this particular issue.
We have a certified midwife, Ms. Lesley Paulette, who put together a proposal to look at this issue working with the Department of Health and Social Services and with the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs to get some funding to actually take a look at how could we, in fact, bring all our resources to bear to start having children born in Fort Smith. Tonight there will be the first start in this process of consultation with the community to see, in fact, how we do this.
Mr. Speaker, I cannot stress enough how important it is for communities to have the ability to have children born in their community. It is an integral part of the circle of life and death and when you are not there at birth, when you are in a different community, your family is disrupted and things are not the same. I would like to thank the Department of Health and Social Services and MACA for their support in this issue, and I would encourage the people of Fort Smith to come out tonight to the workshop that will be held and provide the input that we need to be able to move this process along so that soon we could have children born in Fort Smith as a matter of natural course. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
BApplause