Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the Member is right that no report can be taken in isolation. There are so many areas of life in the North that are impacted by aspects of the way people live their lives. Everything is inter-related. The Member refers to education as an underlying theme and I could not agree with him more. We as a government have a wonderful opportunity to raise that awareness to the fact that we do have a problem. It is epidemic and it is escalating.
I do not know if there has been a willingness in the past to admit to the seriousness of the problem. It is catching up with us at an alarming rate. We hear statistics from teachers telling us that 40 percent of the children in their classrooms have special needs. We cannot afford either the monetary or the human costs of not pursuing these needs proactively.
With respect to recruitment and retention, the Aurora College's membership is excellent and expanding, training workers to go into the communities with the specialized skills and tools they will need to serve the communities. I am pleased to see the cooperation with Aurora College in helping to create a Northern workforce, which is ultimately what we need. Anything else in the short term is not a permanent solution.
When we talk about education and awareness, one of our best focuses could be creating awareness in children who have not yet taken up an unhealthy lifestyle. I was very pleased in Fort Providence when we saw children talking about tobacco addiction and the program going on in the community. With some of the more senior people in the community, I do not know if we would ever really register a lot of results in terms of tobacco cessation.
When we are talking about FAS and FAE, if we could focus our attention on the child right from conception to the age of six years, there is a tremendous amount that could be done during that time period. I know the department has talked about that in some of the overviews which have been given to Members. Those are the kinds of areas we have to decide on, if that is a priority we want to direct our attention to.
One of the things we have already talked about as a group is how much awareness there is in the communities as to the cost of some of these indicators we refer to. How can we get the message out to communities that if this amount of money was not spent on addressing this problem, this is the positive direction in which that money could be spent?
I think sometimes we quote statistics, but we need to break it down into bite size pieces that people can take and relate to. Then, communities can set goals and targets, just as we as a government need to do.
When we talk about healthy life choices, we look at the area of role models. I think there is a tremendous amount of good that can be done with that. We sometimes tend to focus on the negative statistics. There are people in our communities that are healthy, stable, and doing well. We do not celebrate that. We could be more positive in our awareness campaigns in depicting them and their actions, and the result of their healthy life choices.
Members of this House carry a lot of responsibility for creating awareness through what we do as role models as well. People watch us and what we do and say, so we have a huge responsibility in that area as well.
It was only five weeks ago the majority of the Members of this House entrusted me with this responsibility, and subsequently Mr. Kakfwi assigned me with the portfolio of Health and Social Services. I just want to tell you, even though the forum report points out many challenges, I think it is an area where we can make progress. I certainly sense optimism in the department and amongst the Members as well. Any positive impact we have will be good and make this worthwhile. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.