Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I, too, felt it was quite an experience to review the act because of the nature of the work that we did as a committee to go through and review the act and talk to the communities about how the act has impacted on the lives of some of the community members that came out and spoke at our meetings. I agree with the comments made by the two previous committee members and the people that supported us in our review.

Also, in addition to what they said, I’d like to thank the people that we worked with in Alberta. It was a good way to start to see what works down there. With the government down there, it seems like they had the masses in order and the money to be able to do a lot of things that we in the NWT probably couldn’t afford to do, but it was something that maybe we could look at scaling down some of what they do while capturing some of their ideas and making them work for the Territories.

Throughout all our meetings, we met with a lot of foster parents. I thought that there were many, many good foster parents who had all kinds of stories and were very hardworking and dedicated people supporting some of the foster children that they were supporting. I thought that was important.

I thought that one of the key things was in our review, was to try to find a way to make the social

workers do social work rather than just child protection work. Social workers were so busy in the child protection area, apprehensions, court and so on, that they were not able to do the social work that is required of them to go into the homes and work on prevention. They’re so busy trying to deal with the issues at hand that it was hard for them to free themselves up to do social work, working with the families and so on, and do prevention.

I guess growing up in the Territories I have a lot of friends that were foster children and I know a lot of people in the Territories that were taken away from their homes at a very young age, and it’s not a high percentage of their people that turned their lives completely around to live in society today and function and so on; whereas, a lot of these foster kids have been jumping from foster home to foster home to foster home to residential school back to foster home and stuff. I mean, many of the kids were in residential school and at the end of the year had nowhere to go. When the school year ended they didn’t have a home to go back to for a couple of months until the next school year started and so on. We don’t want to see that type of thing prevail; some of the stuff I talked about earlier in Alberta where they had supported the kids that went to school throughout the summer and so on.

Another thing that I found that was a bit of a dilemma, I think, for families up here was a little bit of what Mr. Abernethy touched on, and that was there’s a fine line between the grandparents being paid weekend babysitters and foster care. Somehow throughout this act, we had to try to find a way where if the children are in jeopardy in any way whatsoever, that the social worker is in there working with the family, with the grandparents and so on and placing those kids in those homes and being supported by the department and by the whole foster parent program.

They have issues where if the foster kids are taken by the social worker and placed, then there’s compensation paid to the placement area where the kids are put or the foster parents. Yet the grandparents don’t want to take that risk, or families don’t want to take that risk so they intervene before the social worker intervenes and they end up protecting the child from apprehension, but the end result is that they don’t receive any financial support. That is one of the key items I’m hoping that can be resolved through this review, that when the grandparents are taking the kids and it is a legitimate issue where it’s not just because the parents are having an issue for the weekend or having an issue for a week or so, that the kids end up in the grandparents’ home -- you know, it’s legitimate and it’s necessary – and that’s where I feel that the social worker can go in and work with the families to support those family members.

I thought that was something that would free up a lot of time for the social workers to do other work, going back to that family and doing some social work and dealing with some of the issues and so on.

I guess to kind of close the loop on this, I thought that some of the access to treatment was a bit of an issue. I think that only one treatment facility is available in the Territories and that most of the communities we talked to felt that treatment right there in their hometown on the land, in cultural camps and so on was the way to go; by treating the whole family. Just sending one member to a treatment facility somewhere in the South or in Hay River, one member at a time, to try to deal with any addiction issues that may be causing issues with child care was not working. I think that this government should support the addictions counselling and addictions treatment closer to home.

That is some of what we’ve made recommendations on and some of the stuff that I felt was the big key items in our report that would improve the situation for our children and families in the NWT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.