Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would first like to acknowledge the Health and Social Services budget is a particularly well put together piece of work, and I would like to commend all of the staff. They have done all the work necessary. I would also like to welcome the new director of finance to the table in this capacity for the first time.

I just have a couple of quick comments. The one comment is more in line with the Minister's other hat as Minister of Finance, but directly related to the issue of macroeconomic policy and the need, as I laid out in my reply to the budget address, to look at the expenditure side of our operation which means, in this capacity of course, that we spend over 60 cents of every dollar in the social envelope and 25 percent of every dollar goes to health and social services. We know that the majority of the ills that are caused are caused by some very basic issues of alcohol abuse, drug abuse, diet, exercise and smoking, and the need to stay focussed on the good work that is underway on the prevention side or else the Minister will never have enough money as the Finance Minister to continue to meet the needs of the people. That is one broad concern.

I know that we had targets where we want to spend at least 1 percent on prevention or move up to 1 percent, but I think that is going to have to be targeted for seriously across the government in terms of trying to control our costs as we found out with the butthead campaign. A good education campaign can work, especially when it is targeted to those that have a tremendous influence in our society, which is the young people who will buy into the need for what we are talking about and convince their parents as opposed to the other way around. The children have a tremendous influence on the behaviour of their parents. So that is the one caution that I want to encourage, but I guess is to just keep focussed. We have to provide on the future side all of the services we do and fixing the ills and the social problems, but our salvation will be in finally turning around some of the health indicators that we now know plague us in the North that are caused by personal choice. Thank you.