Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I rise today to talk about something that’s a concern, especially in our smaller communities dealing with oral health care.

A colleague of mine yesterday made a statement on Drop the Pop. That’s one way we’re looking at preventing oral disease, tooth decay and issues that arise with poor oral health. This government lost out on some funding in this coming budget through the THSSI funding that we get through the federal government and there’s still a lot of concern out there in the small communities about poor health care within our children, and even within our children from zero to five.

I want to ask the government today, and looking at the new federal funding that’s coming down the pipe for the three territories in the next three years in the amount of $70 million, to look at replacing that funding that went into the research on getting stats, put that funding back, not to do any further

research but to put it into hiring dental hygienists, put in the proper prevention, promotion and education programs, provide every child in the Northwest Territories with a toothbrush even. Do something to prevent the damage that’s caused by oral health care.

Just doing a little bit more research into this, I find that oral health care just doesn’t cause gum disease or tooth decay but it leads to other things such as diabetes, oral cancer, pancreatic cancer, heart disease and kidney disease, so this is a very serious issue. We lost funding that we had last year. I’d like to see this government put it back in for some proper care and treatment prevention, education and promotion programs.