Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, it’s a fairly broad question but I’ll do my best to stick to youth and younger people as the Member’s statement focused in what I thought was mostly about youth. We are coming forward. We have just tabled more recently the Youth and Mental Health and Addictions Action Plan which articulates and outlines a number of things that we need to do as a government and as an Assembly to support our youth who are struggling with either mental health issues or addictions issues.
One of the key things that we’re looking to do is providing some quality counselling supports to our youth. Traditionally, a lot of this has been done in the school system. We’re looking at a new way of doing this with community counsellors that are working in schools but also are year-round employees rather than seasonal or school-based employees. It’s pretty exciting work. I think by working together, we could really make a difference in people’s lives.
In the Member’s statement, he talked about the healthy family programs. I think it’s really important to recognize that a child’s development starts long before birth and that we need to continue to do things to help families be healthy, help families be strong in raising their children. We have healthy family programs in 17 communities in the Northwest Territories providing high-quality programming to help expectant parents be ready for their child’s birth to make sure that they’re in a strong position that they’re living healthy lives and that they’re in a position to provide supports to their children.
There are a large number of things we are doing between the action plan, the child and family committees, as well as treatment option counselling and everything else that’s available to residents. I would strongly encourage the member to encourage youth in his community, youth around the Northwest Territories to take advantage of the help lines, the Facebook pages we have to provide support, and to talk about these issues that people are facing. We need to not be silent about the challenges people are facing, whether it’s mental health or addictions. We need to be working to get the message out there. I applaud the Member for his statement. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.