Thank you, Mr. Chair. First, I think it is important to highlight that this legislation for us is one prong of a multi-prong approach to dealing with tobacco and its denormalization. It is also focussed on normalizing a non-smoking lifestyle among youth, an initiative that we brought forward and actually got a lot of national attention in our Don't be a Butthead campaign that has been a success beyond even any expectations we had with regard to the uptake where kids are being asked to pledge that they will grow up as non-smokers. This year in the phase two of our campaign, kids are asked to recommit to this and then to bring some friends along and expand the level of commitments across the NWT where we have well over 2,000 of our young people who have made that commitment.
This legislation is another piece that we believe is very important. We are starting from a point where, overall, our smoking rates are a little bit more than twice the national average. In some of our smaller communities, it is actually three times the national average, so we are coming from a long way. In the coming year, we will be planning our follow-up surveys to the ones that were done as a baseline when we initiated this strategy to start measuring in finer detail how much success we are having by age group and at the community level. At this point in time, we are hopeful that we will bring our rates down rapidly. I think one Member used an image of a tipping point, but things can move quickly in this area as in others. Once you get your momentum and you can find ways to sustain it, we are quite hopeful that our rates will come down.