Marci cho, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I, too, rise to support this motion. I went to the open house that A New Day had yesterday and I was pleasantly surprised by how much help they provided to people in the communities. I know that people from the communities I represent would be people that would attend the A New Day program. One stat that they gave us that kind of really hit home with me was the number of individuals that walked in off the street and voluntarily went there to get the help of these individuals running the program. I think, for me, that's an indication of how well this program is working. When people are there trying to get help, then they're not getting into trouble.
I think the first step to assist many of these individuals to understand the reasons they do the things they do, and I think the program provides that information to them. If you look at the group, and we throw numbers around like 299 men and 59 women up until the end of September, when you think about the families and the children and the spouses that are involved, that's a huge number for the NWT, of people who almost appear to be non-productive members of society to become real productive members of society. That's very important, because productive members of society don't go to jail, and productive members of society send their children to school, and they become a support to the family. When there is violence in the home, the persons who are the most affected are the smaller children.
We've seen this in the NWT. There are all kinds of statistics that indicate that we have a very high ratio compared to the rest of the country, in the NWT, in violence. If we could bring that down, this group is working to bring that ratio down, working to bring the ratio down to as far as they can. If they could eradicate family violence, that would be absolutely awesome. That would be something that the whole of government wants. That's something that everybody that's elected should want.
When you move forward and you say, "We will eliminate violence," and you're creating productive people that are going to help their children go to school, I mean, the long-term positive ramifications of something like that are enormous. I've seen this program for the first time, and I've heard a lot about it. The honourable Member from Deh Cho has told me about the program, but, for the first time, I've seen it. I was amazed.
They're in very cramped quarters. As the Member said, all of us could hardly fit in their office, and that's where they provide the program. They don't have all of the space necessary maybe to run the program, but they've done a real good job, I think, of running the program. You know, you get people coming back from the communities, as the Member for Mackenzie Delta said, come back into the community. After they've left, they come back to the program.
People have done some stages of the program, come back and finished the program or try to come back to finish the program. Just overall, it's a good feeling to see that people who are walking in off the streets and are trying to do something and they're recognizing, trying to do something positive for their lives which is ultimately going to affect the people that they love and the people that are in their homes.
So, I strongly support this program. I think that a by-product of a program like this is lower medical costs to people, to the spouses, to the individuals, lower justice costs, lower RCMP costs. There are all kinds of reasons that this government should support this. For the low amount of money that is being spent, there are all kinds of positive and huge impacts, positive fiscal impacts to our government, positive fiscal impacts to the NWT. For that reason, I think we have to have this program continue. Marci cho, Mr. Speaker.