Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yesterday, medical staff alerted me to an alarming situation related to crack cocaine addictions right here in Yellowknife. While the degree of crack addiction in our city is itself horrendous, in major

Canadian cities where similar degrees of addiction have developed, addicts increasingly suffered from other even more serious consequences.

Mr. Speaker, here is what I am hearing from one concerned physician who is working on the front line of infectious disease in the North. He notes that “outbreaks of TB and syphilis pale in comparison to what I now see emerging on our city streets. Further, intravenous crack cocaine use is becoming increasingly widespread in Yellowknife. This ominous development has a number of serious implications. Intravenous crack cocaine needs to be injected frequently to sustain its high. On the streets of Vancouver, addicts will routinely inject crack one to two times per hour. This need to inject frequently led more than any other factor to an explosion of HIV and Hepatitis C in Vancouver’s downtown east side with now well known results.”

In Yellowknife, he notes that this is like a pile of kindling waiting for a flame. Mr. Speaker, what are we doing about these addictions and increasing potential for an epidemic of diseases? On October 29, 2004, a motion was debated and passed in this House to get more addictions programs on the ground here including for youth. Quoting here from Hansard for that debate, MLA Sandy Lee had this to say, “I tell you, if we let this stuff spread without any kind of aggressive campaign, we are going to pay for it. We could be the kind of place where people from down south will send their people up here because we have such a great program, we are on the ball and we are dealing with it.”

What has changed in the ensuing five years, Mr. Speaker? Not one thing. As mentioned in the 2004 debate, our only addictions facility was the one in Hay River. Unbelievably, the exact same thing is true today. We have one facility, the one in Hay River. The Health and Social Services website says, presently the NWT does not have a residential addiction treatment program for children and youth located in the NWT, but provides access to these services in southern Canada.

Mr. Speaker, as noted by a Yellowknife physician, quote, “Our homeless population is highly addicted already and the introduction of IV crack use is the flame that will cause an explosion of HIV and Hep C here.”

Mr. Speaker, I seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement.

---Unanimous consent granted