Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just want to make a couple comments here. The first one is with the day shelters here in Yellowknife and Inuvik. I just want to talk about the importance of having these in place, especially during the winter months, and that funding. I know funding in Inuvik was

supposed to go to the Day Shelter. That money was resituated so that it could into an emergency shelter in the evenings. I know, speaking with some of the board members, they talked about the importance of doing a day shelter now, so we’re looking at both emergency shelters and day shelters.

With the day shelters I think the funding would be fully utilized in terms of getting counsellors, people that can go and speak to clients that would access the day shelters and not just have a place where you go and warm up. There’s got to be something that goes along with it. Counselling services, resume writing, you know, just basic life skills could be taught at these day shelters and I think that’s something that needs to be looked at when we’re funding some of these organizations to run it. It’s got to be put into a contract saying that the day shelters, when they have them open, they can also be providing services to the clientele.

The other one is just in terms of, you know, my pitch for death review committees again. We looked here under the family violence programs offer protection, assistance and shelter services, just more support in that area and looking at possibly the department working with the Department of Justice to look into the feasibility of having a death review committee and the importance of having that kind of committee in place when we’re dealing with family violence.

I know we’re going through the Child and Family Services Act as well as the action plan that’s coming out. I did some research into some work that’s also been done. The Saskatchewan Welfare Review of 2010 had some really good recommendations in it and it actually focussed on mental health, substance abuse and family violence in the home and how to provide services and having access to efficient counselling and programs for people that are in those three areas. They all intertwine and one kind of feeds off the other and they’re all related. I feel that we have the same situations up here in the North and, I think, looking at that model and those recommendations, we’ve got to look at how we can do that here in the Northwest Territories as well.

Those are just three areas of more just general comments, that I wanted to put out there, just give some ideas, get the department thinking about how we can utilize our day shelters effectively with programs and services for our clientele and not just giving them a place to warm up. I know some of them won’t take it on, but there’s some out there that might need to learn how to write a resume or, you know, might want to take in some counselling and have someone to talk to. So, when we’re funding these day shelters I think that’s got to be taken into account.

Like I said, it would be nice if the department can work with the Department of Justice about this family violence and possibly looking at death review committees and the feasibility of that. So, just comments, and as I said, I just wanted to get the Minister and his staff thinking about, you know, when we fund these organizations, what can we do more and support them more or ask them to do work that would benefit residents and also benefit us as we’re giving them dollars. Thank you, Mr. Chair.