Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I, too, stand in support of the motion. I'm pleased to see it here. In the almost eight years now that I've served in this Assembly, looking back I've tried to take a bit of an inventory of just what have we done, or at least what have I done and helped do in the last two terms here that might have contributed something to our government's role in reducing alcohol abuse. Not a lot of things come to mind, Mr. Speaker. Perhaps I should go through some of the acts in the legislation, but I do recall I think the Motor Vehicles Act in was it the previous Assembly, in which we amended the allowable blood alcohol levels, we reduced those. Has that made a difference in terms of accident and fatality levels on our highways? Perhaps it's too early to tell.

Mr. Speaker, we are about to engage in a very fundamental piece of legislation, the Liquor Act, which has long been overdue and is a part of sort of the control and the management systems that we have, but it is not the big artillery barrage that some people might think it is. It is only a part, and I think a relatively small part, of what is needed in the very large agenda, a very diverse curriculum that we're going to need to really tackle this.

So at least in the eight years that I've been here, I think if we really look at ourselves as a Legislative Assembly, we have been timid on this. We have not paid as much attention to it, we have not recognized it for what it is. It's not like an emergency or a forest fire kind of a crisis that all of a sudden it's there and we can easily focus on it, we know that there's going to be an end to it. Alcohol and its affect have been part of society for thousands of years. It is something that's very deeply rooted and very deeply entrenched. It's part of our value system, part of our lifestyles and it is not going to get turned around, but, as many of my colleagues have already said, we can't afford anymore to be complacent about the trends that we're seeing.

Mr. Speaker, our motion asks the government in some ways to take some relatively specific action, but I would like to say that I hope the government reads into it a much broader mandate, a much broader desire on the part of the Members over here on this side, to engage in a very aggressive, very creative and high-powered approach to the issues that we're facing and that all the indications tell us are going to get worse. Mr. Speaker, one of the things that has concerned me is that no one agency or department of our government really has the lead or the responsibility to take this on. Even in the Liquor Act itself, that is essentially a piece of business and administration law. It does not assume the responsibility to help our society undertake a responsible use of alcohol. We have the Department of Justice, of course, that deals with so many of the consequences along with the Department of Health and Social Services, Education, Culture and Employment certainly has a role, perhaps not as direct. So we have all these different pockets of responsibility and impact, but we have not taken this problem and put it up on a single pedestal, if you will, Mr. Speaker, so that we can say okay, here is where we're going to vest the authority and the accountability for addressing and attacking this problem and this is the agency we're going to resource, we're going to make sure they have the tools, the dollars, the expertise needed to make a difference. I think that is one of the significant barriers that we have in this Assembly and in this government to achieving a real impact on this kind of social ill. It is so big, it is so multi-layered that we, I think, have managed collectively to avoid or defer the role that we should be playing in this.

Mr. Speaker, I do applaud the initiative of the Department of Health and Social Services, the undertaking of the former Minister, Mr. Miltenberger, to apply 1 percent of that department's expenditures to addictions. That is an example of the kind of leadership that will hopefully get us there, but we need to be committed to it. I look at the example that other organizations, particularly the NGOs, other levels of government have already shouldered in dealing with the frontline consequences of alcoholism. We've talked about the friendship centres, the YWCA, the Salvation Army and we should certainly mention in there the role that the Students Against Drinking and Driving organization has played in this community and around the NWT. This is truly where leadership is being demonstrated and where we should very aggressively be undertaking a campaign to bring these strengths of our community together and forge a true partnership and coalition to take this on. That, Mr. Speaker, I think is where the first step needs to be taken if we're really going to turn this corner right here in this Assembly. Thank you.

---Applause