Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, today I as well would like to speak to the issue of family violence. Family violence affects all our communities and unfortunately, many of our families in our constituencies. Mr. Speaker, while this family violence is a symptom and if we are indeed going to eradicate family violence, we have to start dealing with the root causes. We have to deal better with education issues. We have to do a better job with employment, with housing. We have to come up with an alcohol and drug strategy that will enable us to deal with the terrible problem of alcohol abuse and children born with FAS and FAE. We have to help families with their parenting skills.

Mr. Speaker, new money is not necessarily the only answer. We have to look at how the government is spending the money it currently has. Is it spending it in the best way possible? Is there real cooperation between Health and Education, Culture and Employment? We are dealing with common clients on this issue. With Housing and Justice, do they actually meaningfully work together and come up with common strategies? We have to have the government complete some of its many ongoing and incomplete strategies, such as the alcohol and drug strategy. A few years ago, we had five alcohol and drug facilities. This year, we have one. We are still waiting for the alcohol and drug strategy. We are waiting for the early intervention strategy. We are waiting for the continuing care strategy.

Mr. Speaker, these are done separately but, in actual fact, they are linked because they deal with the same people in our constituencies. So yes, as a government we need to speak up on this issue but as a government we cannot stand up and say we cannot do anything else because we do not have any new money. There are many ways we could deal with the issue by better spending the resources we have.

We can expand the classification of what a single mother is eligible for in terms of income support and being able to stay home and not cut it off at four-years old. All these things will work to help family violence. They are real, concrete, demonstrable phases of government we can do to show that, while we are morally and politically committed to this fine sentiment, we are also taking a critical, hard look as a government at what we do as one of the major funding agencies in the Northwest Territories to deal with this significant issue. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.