Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Minister, for that answer in terms of the funding. I understand the authorities do have some latitude in terms of funding; however, they leave some of the decisions to the department. I guess they work in joint effort to see how the funding is. Sometimes they come back and say headquarters have helped in this decision. It's more communication back and forth. It's not so much in headquarters versus the authorities, but it's trying to find a community solution that would make it more reasonable and make more sense in terms of designing programs that would help the youth, children and families.
It doesn't matter what areas, just in terms of health programs and the disabled people, the seniors or the ones dealing with suicide prevention or suicide crisis, mental health, addiction, alcohol and drugs. Those are huge issues in our communities, yet we are still spinning, I think, our heels in terms of how to deal with it in a real big way. It's more of a concern to our people in terms of how do we deal with the alcohol and drug issues in our community. Younger and younger people are getting into alcohol and drugs. Weekends now are like an old broken record in our community. Youth are still using alcohol. People complain all weekend long. RCMP are out all hours of the night chasing around after the youth. Some of them are getting into trouble.
The Minister has a real huge area here to work on. So I guess in that sense, how do we work with the boards? Educate me on the process here. How do we work with the boards? How do we work with the communities? I understand we have representatives on the boards from our communities. I guess maybe taking time to have them know they have the power to say...Yet, we still can't get there. I don't know what it is. It has to be some leadership on your part to say the communities will have some leverage in terms of how they deal with the alcohol issue, the suicide issue or the disability issue. Some leadership has to be provided and I believe the Minister can do this with some support and cooperation from our boards.
It's more important for the people in our communities because the boards seem to have a life of their own after they leave business on their own. Mr. Chair, I just want to encourage the Minister in any way he can help us deal with some of these issues. I know it's a tough one, and it's a big one, and it's never ending. Maybe the Minister can tap into these issues here. Thank you.