Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I, too, would like to speak in favour of this motion. I think that my colleagues have very clearly and well expressed the benefits of respite care for families that are caring for family members that may have special needs.

Mr. Speaker, I have actually been in a situation where I had an opportunity, really a privilege of caring for a couple of adults in my home that were intellectually challenged. Mr. Speaker, it is a very rewarding task but it can be very isolating. It wasn’t long after I had these two individuals come into my home that I started to notice that my phone wasn’t ringing so much anymore. People weren’t inviting me over for dinner or inviting us over as a family. Sometimes people can become and can develop a sense of isolation. They feel that they are in this alone. That is a feeling that needs to be avoided at all costs.

Mr. Speaker, when I hear my colleagues speaking out what works here in Yellowknife and other colleagues speaking out what we need in the small communities, Mr. Speaker, I think we need to take a creative approach to this. I think we need to look at the family unit. I think we need to look at the individual that needs the care. We need to be creative in how we respond to that.

My colleague Mr. Yakeleya just referred to travel and training and staff. Maybe in some situations what is needed is for a caregiver to come into the home for a period of time so that the primary caregiver or family member can go out and do other things. Maybe it isn’t about taking the family member with the challenges out of the home and taking them away someplace else. Maybe it is about bringing someone into the home, but in a sense I don’t think that there is a one solution fits all scenarios approach that we can take to this.

When we do not have the same kind of critical base population, a formalized program may not be as easy to institute in a smaller community where we may be only talking about a few people. It may not be practical to take them away from their home communities. Maybe we need to be very sensitive to the individual circumstances and needs of families and individuals in crafting a program, but whatever we do, it will require money. It will require resources. I am a very strong believer that sometimes very little by the way of support from our government can go a very long ways towards keeping the families together and allowing people to do what in their heart they really want to do, which is care for their loved ones, but at the same time, not end up burning themselves out or feeling like they have to give up their life to do that.

Mr. Speaker, I will support this. Again, I encourage our government as we go forward to adopt best practices, do what works for the individual clients and be there to support any way we can. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.