Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker we have heard many times of this government's work in trying to provide programs and services for the residents of the Northwest Territories. Issues that have been raised in this House, Mr. Speaker, have been in the area of prevention versus treatment. In this forum, we have heard about the cost of delivering health care to residents of the Northwest Territories. Much of those expenditures are spent on delivering health care after someone has become quite ill.
The disappointment, Mr. Speaker, is that we could reduce a lot of our expenditures in health care by being more preventative. As a government, we need to focus on prevention. We need to make a shift and move from dealing with fires that are existing today and challenging ourselves to deal with prevention. There is a saying, "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure". I think that the government has taken it very literally and took some silver coins, as they say, and put them on the weigh scale. A pound of silver on dealing with the after-effects of things like smoking and drug and alcohol abuse and an ounce trying to deal with the prevention side. Mr. Speaker, we need to focus. We need to change the way we look at things and start delivering programs in the area of prevention.
If we are going to make a difference in the Northwest Territories with the fiscal situation we have, we have to make some difficult decisions on how we are going to treat things as prevention. Are we going to focus on dealing with things before they become full blown? Mr. Speaker, I think we need to put more emphasis on prevention. We have seen some work and I hope to highlight that in my questions to the Minister responsible for Health and Social Services later. But I think we need to put more emphasis on the prevention side of the scale. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
-- Applause