Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm assuming that we're on page 6-17 or 16. If that's so, I'd like to ask questions under policy in order to highlight an item that the Social Programs committee discussed that is to do with the FASD policy government-wide.
Madam Chair, I think we are all aware of this issue as an emerging potential catastrophe in the North. I think we're just not aware to what extent this is an issue. We know it's an issue, we just don't know what it looks like. I think that if we don't know what it looks like, it is really hard for the government to plan for it and come up with programs that would address these needs. I would suggest to you, Madam Chair, that we don't really have a comprehensive assessment plan to work this out. For example, in Yellowknife I believe there is a full-time person who assesses learning disabilities and FAS needs, but one person is shared between two boards. If that's the case in Yellowknife, I would venture to say that there are not a lot of resources being put into seeing what the situations are NWT-wide. I just feel that it's very important that we put the resources there to make sure that we know what we are dealing with in order for the government to prepare for it.
I'm not sure I agree with the approach taken lately about testing babies or testing the biological movements of babies after they are born to see if the children are FASD. I think that's going a little too far, with lots of questions to be answered there in terms of rights of parents and privacy, et cetera. Overall I think this is a very important issue and the committee has recommended that the government does more to highlight this issue and the committee has put the government on notice that during the next business plan we expect to have a lot more and full-detail discussions about this. I'd like to ask the Minister for comment on where the department is at and how he plans on responding to that. Thank you, Madam Chair.