Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, today in my Member’s statement I talked about something that is not easy to talk about because it’s something that is in our communities, but it is a very insidious thing and it’s hard to get information about it. It’s hard to create awareness, because I personally have not heard of any public campaign to bring awareness of this issue of this Rohypnol or date rape drug. Mr. Speaker, I am going to direct my questions today to the Minister of Justice.
Mr. Speaker, the thing that makes this so difficult is the combination of factors that allow this crime to
be perpetrated on innocent victims without much opportunity to respond to it. Mr. Speaker, a lot of people who may be the victim of such a thing aren’t aware of what they should do in order to protect evidence. Sometimes, Mr. Speaker, days go by, reducing the quality of the evidence if they did know what to do with it. Mr. Speaker, the other thing is, it’s extremely difficult for the victim to articulate what happened because the effect of the drug actually makes them unable to relate that to the authorities. Mr Speaker, of course, anytime something like this happens, it’s very difficult for the victim to talk about it, because quite often under the influence of this drug, the victims are assaulted in some way.
So, Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the Minister of Justice does he have any way of finding out throughout law enforcement authorities exactly how prevalent this is, understanding that quite often these cases never come to the conclusion of people being successfully prosecuted in the courts. But just through the enforcement authorities in the Northwest Territories, would we be able to get a sense of how common this particular crime is committed? Thank you.