Thank you, Mr. Speaker. On many occasions I have stood up in this House and spoke on the crisis of mental health and addictions in the Northwest Territories. However, today I will speak to one that tends to get overlooked on far too many times and that’s dealing with prescription drug use, specifically pain killers.

Pain killers are very effective in treating acute pain and chronic pain and pain near the end of life. However, these pain killers can be highly addictive and easily misused and can be fatal at high doses or when combined with alcohol or other sedating drugs. This really affects not only the individual, it affects our health care system and also affects the families who are trying to help their relations who are dealing with these addictions.

In the NWT and also jurisdictions across Canada, we do have a fragmented, unsystematic and insufficient data and monitoring of prescription drug use, misuse and the death that’s caused by overdose from prescription drugs.

Across Canada there has been an increase in the demand for addictions treatment programs for people who are addicted to prescription drugs, and we need to do more to regulate the pills themselves and users that they are approved for. We need to take this into the hospitals and to the health centres to make more information readily available to physicians, to families, to the patients and, as I said, to the physicians about their prescribing practices and also talk about the intervention to their patients who might be experiencing some of these addictions.

In 2013 the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse released a report, entitled “First They Do No Harm: Responding to Canada’s Prescription Drug Crises.” In that report there are many recommendations, some of them alluding to a standardized pan-Canadian surveillance system, a Canada-wide prescription monitoring program, strengthening regulations and a review of legislation related to the safety of these drugs. We also need to do more education and empower the public about prescription drug misuse.

Now is the time for action, and time is very critical. As we continue to talk about it, there are people that are continuing battles with these addictions, and I think the time is now to take action on this. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.