Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, there's also, I guess, a number of concerns that were raised. There's the other side of the program where individuals or communities or family members think that Health and Social Services are too involved, we're there to take the children away. That's something that I've had to deal with, as well. The fact is, we're a situation where it's not hands-off. We're involved, we're trying to do as much as we can to ensure that the safety of children is being met. There's recruitment out there for trying to get more foster families registered. Where we have communities that, for one reason or another, don't have a social worker, they have social workers travel in and help that way as well as regular communications that can be done with the regional office or the department itself.
Fostering is important. It's one of our highest priorities and we've been working on a proposal. The framework is in place of trying to address the issue of foster parents. For example, the rates of pay. Should it be standardized? What's included? Right now, there's a lot of issues that are up for one's interpretation of how a program can be applied, so we see different rates for children in care across the territory. So we're working on that piece of it and seeing what we can do, but it something that is high
on our list of priorities of how we deal with children in need and in care.
As a relationship with aboriginal organizations and aboriginal governments, it's one thing we've worked with. In fact, our last piece of legislation that we worked with, we went to great lengths to work with the aboriginal governments and organizations to ensure that the issues they were raising were being addressed, and that was one of keeping children in their own communities with their own families to the best we can. Ultimately it comes down to if we can get more people in line to step up and help out when it comes to the fostering portion. As I stated, we're working on a plan to help that along and help resource it at a better level. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.