Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I wanted to take this opportunity to respond in part to the Minister of Health's statement, "Taking Action On Tobacco". I think that certainly there are many government initiatives, but this one correctly identifies the problem, Mr. Speaker. The Minister has said that we know our smoking rates are too high, particularly in our youth and young adults, alarmingly too high, higher than most of the country, Mr. Speaker. It talks about what we might be able to do in order to take on that challenge and try to turn the tide on smoking. I think one of the important initiatives is legislation that will prevent smoking in public buildings and in the workplace. I see the Minister has indicated Ms. Crowe is coming to the North to tell her story and I know it is a compelling story of her lung cancer and it's attribution to secondhand smoke in the workplace.

But, I think there is another important piece here, Mr. Speaker, besides legislation, which will be important, despite the fact already that you could make the case that it is a harmful substance and doesn't have any place in the workplace -- and possibly Worker's Compensation and insurance should take that into account -- but I think programming is the other key piece, Mr. Speaker. This is something, I think, over the years where this government, not unlike many other governments, has really fallen down. Where we have come up short, Mr. Speaker, is in having a comprehensive plan that is linked across departments.

This is not solely the responsibility of the Department of Health, Education has a large role to play and certainly the Ministry of Youth has a large role to play. This is a department, the Ministry of Youth, that we set up and created some three years ago and to this point, in my mind, it has simply paid nothing but lip service to this. There is no budget for the Ministry of Youth and a lot of these initiatives could be tied in under this department. We talk about developing an anti-tobacco component in the NWT school health curriculum. That's a very good idea but we can't do that while at the same time, not promoting physical education in all of our schools and making sure that is a priority.

We have a great opportunity here at this time with Canada Winter games going on, Mr. Speaker, to use some of the role models and athletes who certainly are heroes to our young people, have them tell their story. I find it amazing to believe that someone can be competitive at that level and smoking at the same time. I'm sure it is not the case, Mr. Speaker. So I urge the department to work with other departments in developing the initiative. Let's not make the same mistakes we've been making for the last 10 years. Thank you.

---Applause