Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to thank Mr. Bromley and his seconder for putting some thought to this motion and bringing it to the floor so we can have some discussion. What I
understand from this motion is that Mr. Bromley is asking this government for some formula for success for our people. There is a formula out there. He is asking the Assembly as a whole. We are asking our leaders that we elected for Cabinet to investigate, look at the possibilities of a successful program, look at success for people in our communities, look for success in our children and to look at and come back to us and say this is what we found that is going to be successful.
Several years ago I was watching the program in United States. They got really radical in the States on issues with drug and alcohol and substance abuse, so radical that this school in the States is called Sobriety High. Young kids were in the schools and they were drinking and missing school and all that. The community got behind this issue and said we’re going to have a sober school. It’s called Sobriety High. They have a pilot project where the kids were in there. They did the school but they also introduced many self-supporting techniques, meetings, 12-step programs that these young adults were doing. It’s so cool to see these young people in Grade 11 and 12 going for lunch and having a 12-step meeting. They are so cool to listen to them talk about what it’s like to be sober in school. It wasn’t 100 percent successful, but it had a high degree of success for these people in the United States. They had a really good celebration. People teased that school because it was called Sobriety High. You could see the sparkle in their eyes, the enthusiasm and the success. I think that’s what we are asking through this motion that we do some innovative thinking.
We have a lot of reports where 90 percent of our RCMP time is spent because of drinking or drug use or some contributing effect because of the abuse of it. We can cut down the alcohol. RCMP is going to have many other things to do that will help the communities, but they are so busy.
This motion here is asking this government, the ones that we elect to be our Ministers, to get your department behind you and say, what can we do? Can we come up with a successful formula? Education, Justice, Health, what can we do when we put our heads together and say, is this the right formula? Can their departments look at what we’re dealing with? A disease that is in the North and it is hitting us hard.
When you deal with a disease as in a medical field, you have to have a remedy. There are remedies. Mr. Bromley talked about it in Old Crow. Good for those people in Old Crow. Maybe we should invite them with us and talk to us. That is our own people that have the tools. We have a lot of good people even in Yellowknife who we could talk to. We have to get everybody together. This is not a race issue. This is a humanity issue right across the board. It
doesn’t matter if you are rich or poor. I think we need to get a new remedy, talk about it.
You go to the Justice correctional facility. I bet you 98 percent of those people are in there because of alcohol. How much do we pay each day for them to stay there? They have it good because we wheel down the food to them. They don’t even have to get up to eat it; we push their food to them. They have it good, but most of them are there because of drugs or alcohol.
That’s what I like about this motion. It talks about going back to the land and healing from the land. It may not seem quite right for some people, but most of the issues we need to work together on. The land is where you are going to find the healing. That is why I like this program.
Mr. Speaker, I want to say, for the record, I will be 110 percent behind this motion.