Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'm going to talk about Child and Family Services. Child and Family Services has been continuously criticized by the Indigenous families for years, by the Aboriginal groups, not just in NWT but throughout Canada, as well, by the past two Auditor General reports.

This system is broken. I have walked with people through this system, and what I have found is a system that says they are there for reunification, but, in reality, they are forced to check boxes by what is best practice instead of meeting people where they are at to assist them and support them.

Mr. Speaker, whose best practices are these? Because they're not Indigenous best practices.

I think of what happened long ago, if there were people or families who struggled with their children, it was the stronger people in their family who supported them, or other people of the community. They taught them, they encouraged them, and, only if everything else could not work for those family members, they would care for them; but, Mr. Speaker, they were always there to welcome them back and give them the opportunity to try again when they could.

Mr. Speaker, I know and understand there are those cases where it is in the best interest of the child to be in a safe space and with another family, and I do support this. I do know that the department is doing what they think is best. Knowing that there are around 1,000 kids in care in the NWT and that they are all Indigenous, how do we educate those who are new to our territory, non-Indigenous social workers who have never grown up in a small, isolated community and have not lived through the trauma that our people have lived through, even to begin to understand and meet people where they're at?

What I would like to suggest is that we need traditional support workers and/or advocates for family members to be present when meeting with the child and family services department to ensure that they are being heard and that they have support to know what their rights are and if and when they are not being provided with all the information, as well as to acknowledge when the visit goes well, and may be able to support the parent through the system to access what they need to work toward reunification with their child or children, and this does not become a "he said, she said" scenario, which we know who will be believed in this circumstances, Mr. Speaker. Thank you.