Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I stand here before you not just as the MLA for Range Lake but as a health care professional who’s been practicing here in the North for over 20 years and serving not only the needs of Yellowknife but pretty much the needs of all of the Northwest Territories and prior to 1999, Nunavut as well. So I stand here before you today as someone who I think has got a lot of vast experience when it comes to prescription drugs and health care.

I will not deny the fact that illicit drug use, tobacco, alcohol, these are all serious addictions out there that we see every day, and I don’t want to take anything away from those addictions out there, but

what I was talking about in my Member’s statement earlier today is what I like to refer to as the quiet addiction. This is the addiction we don’t talk about as much, because we talk about the other ones that have so much more press time and media attention. That’s narcotic and opiate dependence that leads to dependency as well as addiction.

This is a serious issue that tends to go quietly and unannounced, and again, when you’re trying to get information about it, there is nothing out there. So I was very concerned when trying to look for information about it. We statistically have nothing out there to lead by. So my question for the Minister of Health here today is: Why is the department not looking more into the addictions of prescription narcotic abuse and why is this information not available to the people of the Northwest Territories?