Thank you. Yesterday I talked about the drug problem, drugs and crimes in my region. Not just my region, but it's in all of the small communities. And, yes, Mr. Rodgers is right that, you know, it is destroying our communities. It's destroying the life of our young people. It's a major issue. It's a big problem, especially in small communities because we don't have lots of resources in small communities but the drugs are coming in -- like even taxi coming in from larger regional centre to small communities when they know the RCMP are off the road when they're not working. You know, like they come at certain time to do drop off. That's another issue too that's -- you know, it's not healthy.

In my community this past weekend, this was an incident that happened, but nobody told us. Like, we have -- I mean, I haven't heard from the authority or anybody that, you know, what happened because there was a lot of people. There was, like, the army. There was the SWAT team. It's involving drugs. But, like, I mean, it was a chaos for a while. There was -- it was busy and then all of a sudden everything died down. And it happened this past weekend. And we don't even know, like -- there's lots of rumors going around but I don't want to repeat any of those rumors, you know. Like, it's just -- it's not right for me to do that. But -- so that happened. And in small communities, you know, like, for -- I do like the fact that there's a lot of RCMP because with a lot of RCMP present in my community, we do feel okay. We do feel a bit safe. But it just goes to show that for -- based on per capita for my community, we shouldn't have that much amount of RCMP presence. So it just goes to show that we do have a major issue, you know, in my region, in my community. So I just wanted -- I want to say it's not right but it's just that -- it's not fair for my -- the constituents in my region, you know, one of the community -- two communities, they don't have any police services. So they don't feel safe, you know, because they don't have no RCMP detachment. They don't have nothing there. So they are more vulnerable than some of our people. But with the drug activities, the vulnerable people, the elders, the little children, are most affected. And we have lots of children that are in care already but because of this drug activities, there's more children in care. It's a voluntary agreement. But if it wasn't for grandparents, I think there would be more than 100 percent of children in care. But it's not happening. So what we need more is that for me, I think we need to start with the youth, with the children. We need to introduce -- we need to talk to the young people, or we need to have an awareness or an education program starting -- or have it part of our education curriculum, school curriculum starting with JK. I know they're young, but they know what's going on too. They know why they're sleeping at grandma and grandpa's house, you know, like so they know what's going on. They can feel it. They can see. And they can hear it. So it does have a major impact on a lot of community members.

There's a lot of good people living in small communities. I cannot say that everybody's bad, but it's just that it's the addiction. It's the influx of drugs coming in from outside, and it's not helping our communities. It's not helping anybody, but it's destroying the lives of our young people. It's having impact on them mentally and emotionally. And just like Danny said, you know, like, what's our future going to look like for the workforce? You know, like, because we are relying on our young people to take over one day, and that's what the leaders are always saying, you know. So we need to do something before it gets out of -- it is out of -- I don't think it's really out of control yet, but I think we can do something. We can do more to stop it so that it doesn't get too far that it's destroying our future generations. And not only that, but -- that and the long term, you know, we know these illegal drugs, they're made somewhere in people's warehouse. Wherever it came from, we know the prescription drugs how it's made, but these illegal drugs, it's not to be consumed. But a lot of young people are consuming it. So what kind of impact it's going to have on health care in the future? So that's a thing that I'm kind of worried, like. It's going to have a major impact on health care. And these are young people that they have so much potentials. They have a whole life. The whole life -- you know, I mean, they have so many years still ahead of them and yet, you know -- like, I mean, if we don't do anything now, it's going to be too late for some. But before it gets to many of our young people -- because the crack cocaine is the one that's more readily available in small communities, and they're cheap -- we know they're cheaply made, and they're easy and cheap to buy. Even weeds are also laced. We know that, you know. And so if you buy off a dealer, what I heard is a lot of those are laced with fentanyl and other strong chemicals. So that's why a lot of our young people are addicted to it. This is what we heard from people who are trying to educate our young people, you know, like to discourage them. So I think for me what I do like, you know, what I see here, and I know that it's in the business plan of how they're going to do it, how -- but I think more education, more awareness needs to be done, and because with the justice system it also needs to be done in jail as well because the repeat offenders, you know, like, we need to do something more. But I just -- it's more of a comment that I think that we should start right from JK. For me, that's what I -- you know, I don't know how my colleagues feel. But I know that it needs to be start -- we need to get to the young people before it gets out of control and destroy our communities and destroy the lives of our young people who are going to take over in the future, you know, because the Baby Boomers are -- a lot of them retired. Generation X is next, and Millennia. So it's the Millennia that we have to worry about and then the other -- and then JK, young people in JK so we need to do -- we need to do more. And I like what I see in here that I know the department -- they have a plan in place. So I just want to say thank you. So it's just more of a comment. Thank you