Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member for Frame Lake brought an important topic to the House today and I'd like to continue that work on, as she put it, elders do make a difference, and I totally agree with her.

During this session we heard about what the Department of Education, Culture and Employment is doing to combat bullying in schools. This House even passed a motion joining our national legislative colleagues on denouncing cyberbullying. It seems everywhere you turn a form of bullying is making its way to mainstream media through social networks.

Another not so well known or talked about form of abuse is bullying of our beloved seniors and our respected elders. This is being brought forward this year as the World Elder Abuse Awareness Day, which is happening on June 15^th.

So why is this so important for us here in the NWT? I have to thank the hardworking NWT Seniors' Society, because they carried out a recent study and it was a questionnaire, and 528 people through 11 communities around the Northwest Territories participated in this questionnaire, and 71 percent who completed this questionnaire indicated that elder abuse was an issue in their community, which is fairly significant. During this study they found that there were some common patterns of abuse worth noting. As they said, all forms of abuse were prevalent, but they did earmark the fact that there were some quite common ones in their report. That one was financial, followed by neglect, emotional and, finally, verbal abuse.

More importantly, it was also noted that there was a lot of silence around the issue, with little or no reporting or understanding of what to do about it, which is a very common practice with elder abuse.

During this awareness day on June 15^th, I will challenge all Northerners, including Members of this House, to find ways to recognize the signs of elder abuse in our communities.

I'm hoping that everyone will take the time to reach out and take an active role on this topic, pass it on, and that's not the abuse I mean, but pass it on in terms of the information and the knowledge that we have by sharing this today, and collect local stories from our elders and our seniors and let them have a voice on this day, and even doing what we're doing here today, Mr. Speaker, and supporting us by wearing purple.

So I'd like to thank the Minister's office, the Minister of Health and Social Services, for spearheading this today. You'll notice a lot of us are wearing our corsages and I'd like to thank everyone for their participation today. Thank you.