Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'm not here to save money for the Government of Northwest Territories on healthcare; I'm here to provide the best healthcare possible to the residents of the Northwest Territories through the systems and mechanisms that we have available. I also need to do that in a fiscally prudent and responsible way.
The Member is obviously leaning towards prevention. I'm not arguing with the Member, I think prevention is absolutely necessary, and we've made investments in prevention and we'll continue to make investments in prevention. But I'd rather spend the money on prevention than spending a whole lot of money to do an assessment as to why, you know, what resulted in everybody being sick in the Northwest Territories.
We already know we have poor outcomes for Aboriginal people in the Northwest Territories, poor health outcomes. We know we have high rates of addiction. We know we have challenges. These are the things that we need to address and we're not going to address that by doing a study. I think ultimately I'm agreeing with the Member; I'm just saying I'm not prepared to spend a whole lot of money to do a study on why people are sick when we already have a significant amount of information out there.
I'm also indicating that we are working on prevention. We need to do more around prevention. I think I've agreed to everything the Member has said, so I'm not sure where the Member is going with this other than suggesting we need to spend a whole lot of money for something that's not going to give us any benefits.