Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me start off by first thanking the folks who got together to comprise the social agenda group for all of their hard work. I know there were many meetings involved, and it is a large group of people to have to bring together and there were a lot of hours put in of volunteer work, and I think that is very important.

As the Minister has indicated a number of times, it is not a government document. I think like other things that we have done in the economic development area, it was a government initiative to put together this group of people to come back with recommendations on how we could deal with some of the systemic issues we are facing in the social envelope. We were looking for recommendations that government could then take and build on with partners, with other levels of government, with First Nations people, with NGOs.

I think that needs to be said. While the Minister has a lot of work on his plate and he is very consumed with his action plan, and certainly it will take a lot of resources and a lot of time to get that implemented, it would be a shame to see these two approaches and these two plans go down separate parallel roads and never converge. It makes sense to look at, in his response to the draft social agenda document, areas where there are obvious linkages.

Certainly it is not just the Department of Health and Social Services which will make it a little more difficult, because as everybody knows, we seem to have a hard time working across departments in responding to these kinds of things, so it will be a challenge. I think it will be up to this lead Minister to pull in the various other departments in his response.

I did want to talk to a few of the specific recommendations that have come out of this. As Mr. Dent has indicated, these are high-level recommendations. I would think we would have to look long and hard to find anybody who could disagree with these recommendations. I guess it will remain a fact that the success or failure of something like this will depend almost entirely on the implementation.

I remember sitting down with the Social Agenda Working Group a number of months ago -- we all did -- and one of the members, I cannot remember which one, but one of the members made the point that we spend an awful lot of time, money, resources and a lot of our efforts on economic development initiatives. I think this is true. I think these are the racy kind of issues we can really think that we can sink our teeth into. They are exciting and we are on the cusp of some great developments in that area. I do not want to diminish that, but I think it is incumbent upon us to take a balanced approach. I think the Premier has spoken to this a number of times. It is important that we do not forget why we are actually trying to raise significant resources from economic development. Really, we are trying to build a better Territory. Much of that has to do with the health and well-being of our people. We want them to have jobs. We want them to have adequate education. We want them to have the best level of health care they can get.

I think that while we are doing a lot of work to develop our economy, much of that is because we want those kinds of benefits to flow in this area.

When I look at some of the specific recommendations, I have to agree with Mr. Dent again that number 10 seems to really stand out, but I think it can be linked very closely with number 9 as well. I think it is going to be about making healthy lifestyle choices, and we have been talking about this continually, but unless we are able to somehow instill this sense in all of us, then it is really not going to do much to talk about prevention, which is recommendation number 10.

Recommendation 10(b) suggests that we need to invest more in prevention. I would entirely agree with this, but without taking funding away from treatment. We certainly cannot take funding away from treatment because I do not think we are there yet, in terms of putting enough funding into treating some of our problems. It may seem like this is continually piling band-aids on, but these things are going to require significant resources going forward, and treatments are getting more and more expensive. I think many groups, including this government, made those points to the Romanow Commission.

If there were any easy answers here, I suppose we would have them by now, Mr. Chairman. There are not. I would agree that prevention is the key. I would agree that a lot of prevention has to do with making these healthy lifestyle choices. We look at FAS/FAE. It is summertime again and you start to think about the number of boating accidents we seem to see every summer. I think there are real links here with education. I think as our population becomes more and more educated and has a better sense, is more self-aware and has a higher level of self-esteem, I think this can start to build. It is not going to happen overnight and it is not going to be something that this government can try to impose. This is going to have to be a partnership approach with all governments and communities working together if we are going to be successful.

Clearly, something like recommendation number 8, which looks at policies and legislation, we can take a real front-line role in the development of those kinds of things, and the social envelope departments will have to be a part of that.

When we are talking about implementing, assessing, tracking, and communicating these recommendations, we always talk about having to assess and monitor much of what we are doing, and this is one of the biggest challenges in government. After we start programs and fund them, it seems to be another ten or so years before we end up really taking a good hard look to see if they are still doing what we set them up to do in the first place. Oftentimes, we find we are pumping money into programs that no longer have any reason for being. This will be a real challenge. We have to make sure that with limited funds, we really target the money that we are spending and ensure that we are able to achieve many of these recommendations.

Things like the suggestion for multi-year funding, something that we have been talking about for a long time. I think many of our NGOs spend much of their time writing proposals for these little bits and pieces of money that they hope to scrape together. If we could somehow get past that and allow these front-line people to actually do the kinds of front-line things they do best -- which I would suggest probably is not proposal writing, as this is not the business they are in -- then we will be farther ahead.

Again, many of these good thoughts are things that we have been talking about for some time and things we have not really managed to get a handle on yet. I am hopeful that this government will take a lead in trying to pull some of these things together, and we will make sure that the Department of Health and Social Services takes a real hard look at how we can link some of these activities with our action plan, because I think that is critical.

I think we do need, as the member of the working group expressed to us, to make sure we spend the kind of effort and money in this area that we do in economic development. If we at least get halfway there, I think we are taking a big step in the right direction.

With that, Mr. Chairman, I will end my comments. I do look forward to seeing this document and the Minister's response come forward to committee. I think we will have quite a lively discussion about this and much debate, and I look forward to doing that good work. Thank you.