Mr. Chair, I’m not too sure where the Minister is coming from by taking 60 kids out of the system, that basically it’s not going to solve the problem for me. There are probably 60 kids in the system that technically shouldn’t be there in the first place. It’s because the process did not allow for transparency and a program to be in place to prevent them from being there in the first place. I don’t think you can ask any kid that’s in foster care do you want to be there. I don’t think they want to be there. I think the issue has to be how can we as government live up to the obligations we have under legislation, called the child and family service

legislation, and live up to the obligations that are in that legislation.

We as a committee went out and spent months on the road on this issue, we heard loud and clear from people right across the Northwest Territories, and they all were saying the same thing: we have to prevent the system to happen in regard to the children that are now finding themselves in the system regardless if it’s foster care, youth justice, and more importantly, what is going to happen after the residential school nightmare we’ve all gone through. This is nothing different. We’re doing something that basically has happened in the past that we’re trying to do using a different method, but again, we’re ending up with the same results.

I’d just like to ask the Minister, like, Fort McPherson, using numbers, just rough numbers, they’re spending about $30,000 a month on kids in care in Fort McPherson; a month. That’s almost $400,000 a year in one community. If you were able to establish a committee to work with the families in that community, get those kids reunited with their parents and also take them out of the system where they should be, again, I’d like to know how can we, as a government, bring down the cost of delivering this system in our communities, get the number of kids that are in that system, find a way to work with the child and family services committee, which is key, find community prevention to community problems and allow the communities to work it through using these committees. I know for, like myself and the Minister and meeting with the child and family services committee in Fort McPherson and also with the deputy, these people mean well. They’ll do it practically for nothing as long as they can help the families in their community.

I’d just like to ask seriously is there a way of reprofiling that $7.4 million or $7.6 million in regard to foster care in regard to prevention programs to find a way to work the system so that we can try to pull the kids out of that system of being institutionalized, regardless if it’s foster care and taken away from their communities, their families, because I think the legal costs in the long run and also the cost to the system is going to be a lot more than a $200,000 investment now in regard to preventing and also finding ways of working in the system. Thank you.