Thank you, Madam Speaker. We don’t actually have a mechanism to track prescription drug abuse at this point in time, but things are underway to try and address this particular concern, and it is a serious concern and we do need to address it.

Under the Pharmacy Act there is an ability to set up a prescription monitoring program, but due to privacy issues that we’re all aware of, we currently cannot require health care providers to enter information into the program. Because we cannot require health care providers to enter the information, we have not yet set up a program to monitor prescriptions.

We are working on the Health Information Act, and the Health Information Act would require health care providers to enter in the information to a prescription monitoring program, should one be established under the Pharmacy Act. Once we have the Health Information Act, we would be able to set up a functioning prescription monitoring program to help tackle prescription drug abuse issues in the Northwest Territories. Thank you.