Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is a page where, obviously, prevention is big. We’ve talked about it on just about every topic that comes up and I just want to stress, again, that that’s often where I’m coming from. I know the Minister is too.
I view early childhood development programming as the number one opportunity we have in prevention. We have Dr. Corriveau with the Minister’s department working away on a framework. I hope we’re going to come up with a really community-based focus on young families, that sort of approach. We have what we have for resources and as we really go to implementation, we will expand those resources. It has to be done well and intelligently and so on. Wherever the Minister sees an opportunity to support that work, I hope he will do that.
My question, just on the Child and Family Services Act and the previous report, I know the Minister is seriously interested and concerned in that area and has attempted to get community child and family services committees up and running and has found it to be challenging. He’s going to continue to focus on seeing that. All other Ministers we’ve had over the last six or eight years have had that same challenge. What are we doing, what is the focus on implementing the recommendations, both in terms of on-the-ground programs and in terms of the act? Can the Minister – I don’t know if he would have this information – give us an update on what number of children we have in care in the Northwest Territories and outside of the Northwest Territories? Let’s back off the specifics and go to the trends. Are the trends increasing or decreasing in those couple of parameters? I’ll start with that.