Marsi cho, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I truly understand the difficulties of Child and Family Services. I have been involved with the Minister on this file for a long, long time. The Minister and I have travelled together on the Standing Committee on Social Programs. In 2009, we developed a report that I think set the pattern for what should be done for Child and Family Services, and I also understand how difficult it would be to carry out those responsibilities.

My issue is the fact that that Member is not listening to the Members on this side. When I say that, I say that for a reason. I am from a small community. I think everybody knows that in here because I talk about that almost every day. I represent small communities, although I live in Yellowknife. I also represent the two communities that are here in Yellowknife, the two Indigenous communities, and I often speak about things that maybe people over there are not really understanding why I am talking about them.

I often speak about homecare and how I am asking this Minister to put a lot of money into homecare. For what reason? To keep elders in their homes. Why? So that elders in the communities can help the families. They are seen as important members of families, Aboriginal families, Indigenous families. I talk about homecare. There is no connection made. We will put money in. Some money goes in. Meanwhile, we are still building these huge long-term care facilities that are going to warehouse our elders. I want to keep them at home so that they can help the families.

Sometimes in our Indigenous communities, the only income in the whole family, and people from small communities know that, is the pension, and they take that away. The elder goes into long-term care. It makes that family basically reliant on income support. It is very difficult to raise children on income support, very difficult to provide the necessities on income support. We need family units in our communities.

I talk about alcohol. I talk about alcohol a lot here and how we need to put programs in place in small communities to stop alcoholism. Alcohol is destroying our communities, and the people who feel that the most, Mr. Speaker, are the ones who can't do anything about it, because they are just little kids. They can't do anything about that. Who can do something about that are the adults, and who can work on that is this department. We need to work on that so that we could help the children, so that we don't get this kind of report again. I recognize that some of the stuff that this Minister is trying to do is positive, is exactly what the small communities want, but they can't have it, because of alcohol. What we need to do is we need to prevent. We need to work on prevention.

We just heard a report a couple of months ago about how our hospital here has hospitalization of people because of alcoholism at six times the national average. It is no wonder that things are getting worse in the communities, and children are worse off. It is because we are not working with the people to prevent some of these things from happening. If we could keep the family together, and we could prevent the families from going deep into alcohol, if we could hire the people, if we could have homecare workers in the small communities, working with the adults, keeping the elders in the community and having jobs and providing for their families, then we are not going to have to collect the kids and send them to a home.

When I speak, I am speaking almost as an expert, because I represent Aboriginal communities. That is what I do. My communities are 95 percent Aboriginal; Indigenous, if we use that term. Those are the people who have their children in care. Our people have children in care. It is not people who have high incomes. It is not people who sit there in big homes. They are the ones who have the kids stay with them. They are the ones who are available.

We have talked. I know that the Minister's desire was to have the families stay in their own communities with their own families. The actions to make that happen were not there. I don't know. I feel like not making the connection. What I am asking for all the time in the House are jobs, homecare spending, early childhood development, alcohol treatment, alcohol work, trying to follow a plan. We developed a plan called Healing Voices where a committee of people travelled all over the Northwest Territories and talked to people. They asked the people, "How do we resolve this issue?” and they came up with 70-some-odd recommendations and presented to this department.

I don't think things have improved. If we believe the reports, I think things have gotten worse. I see that there is a little more work in the communities, but we need to have a lot of work in the communities. We need to be able to put people to work so they can take care of their own kids. I often use the term "All boats shall rise." That is because when you have pumped money into small communities, it will have a positive impact on the regions, which will have a positive impact on our capital city.

"All boats shall rise" basically means that everybody is going to benefit from it, and the people who can't defend themselves, cannot help themselves, will get help because they will have adults who love them, who are going to be there for them, and they are the ones who are going to be resolving this issue. It is going to take the people to resolve the issue and listening to the people and having individuals like the government, this Minister to listen to people go into the communities and help families stay together so that we don't have this.

These are horrible numbers. We hear that there are more children in foster care now in Canada than there were children in residential school at the height of residential school. Residential school destroyed a society of people right across this whole country. We are bringing people in.

I have asked the Minister before. I said, "Let's check the incomes of the people on foster care. Let's find out. Are they in poverty? Are they too poor to have kids? Is that what it is? Is that why everybody is in care?" I think it is. Let's check the people who are in institutions. Let's check the correction facilities to find out if they are former foster kids. I think they are.

Nothing is going to change. This next group is coming in. The next group is going to be the same way. Kids who get taken away from their homes, get taken away from their families think they are not loved. Once somebody feels that they are not loved, then they don't care about society and they become institutionalized. That is where we are headed. That is what we are trying to prevent.

We are doing this as a drastic action. Mr. Abernethy is a wonderful person and a good Minister. This is drastic action because it requires drastic measures. This is a drastic measure because we are in drastic times with our children. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.