Thank you, Mr. Speaker. On Tuesday my colleague, Mr. Braden, drew attention to the dwindling number of facilities to address alcohol and drug treatment in the Territories. As part of his response, the Minister of Health and Social Services stated that "we will spend all the money we have and the millions and millions of dollars to deal with the issue of addictions and the results of the ravages of alcohol. But really and truly, the fundamental choice is how do we get people to make that personal choice so that we can in fact deal with the prevention at the community level."

Mr. Speaker, I would first like to point out that, despite the Minister's words to the opposite, we have not even come close to spending all the money we have to deal with addictions. In reality, the government is scrambling to fund addiction workers, never mind providing prevention programs or facilities. There is, by no stretch of the imagination, a serious effort to address addictions in the territory.

Mr. Speaker, the next point I would like to address is the Minister's comment that the fundamental issue is the personal choice people make to drink. I agree, but I think there is more to this story.

Let us compare creating a healthy lifestyle to learning to read. When a person wants to learn to read, he doesn't just pick up a book and that's the end of the story. Even though he has made the choice to read, he needs to learn some basic skills; things such as the alphabet, how letters are strung together to make words and so forth. Similarly, someone might want to live a healthy lifestyle but they need help in learning how.

In my region, people have been asking for years for help in dealing with their addictions. To simply say it's your choice, don't drink, would be like telling someone to just pick up a book and start reading. It just doesn't work.

Mr. Speaker, there have been countless studies done over the years. At the end of these studies, we learned what we knew before the studies were done: that addiction is the number one social problem in the Northwest Territories and people want help in learning how to create healthy lifestyles. Mr. Speaker, if we are serious about addressing it, I think we should find models of success. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

---Applause