Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, as Minister, I am very sensitive to the issue of child welfare matters. I have about 15 years of time that I spent within the department running facilities and such and I know some of the issues of which Mr. Krutko speaks. I also had the good fortune to be in the 13th Assembly when the family law bills came before our committees and the Legislature. I can tell Mr. Krutko that my recollection -- very clearly -- of the intent of the legislation was to try to address some of the issues and some of the shortcomings of the days of old that Mr. Krutko referred to, where children were apprehended, put into permanent custody at a very young age and spent usually, not usually, but often their entire teenage years in one facility or one program or another and then, when they turned 18 were shown the door and expected to survive and go on as if life was okay with no connection to their families or the cultural issues that Mr. Krutko realized. The sad reality is that often times, there was a transition very quickly into the adult system.

For me, and I know for many social workers, not all of them, the intent is to deal with children as part of a family. I agree wholeheartedly with Mr. Krutko that you cannot successfully take a child out of the family and fix the child and send the child back home with no work being done in the community and no support being provided.

I am concerned about the foster care rates. The department is concerned. We want to assess why that is. I know that we are putting in another ten positions this year to deal with child protection issues and I have heard the concern Mr. Krutko has raised from other groups. The Dene Nation has raised it. When I have been into the Dogrib region, it has come up. It has come up in other communities that I have been at. I am very interested to sit down to look at the process that we have, the system that we have, the legislation that we have. I know what the intent was. If it is not working effectively, then I think we have to work together to make the changes that are necessary.

The bottom line goal is we want to keep children at home. Like Mr. Krutko indicates, we want to try to focus all the resources we can at the community level to do that, and we can do it as a department in isolation from the communities and from the services that are there. Thank you.