Statements in Debates
We’ll commence with that after a short break.
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Question is being called.
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Does committee agree that that concludes committee’s consideration of Committee Report 6-17(3)?
Thank you. Okay, I’d like to call Committee of the Whole to order. What is the wish of the committee today? Mr. Menicoche.
Question is being called.
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Thank you. Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I also would like to recognize my former colleague Mr. David Krutko, and as I’ve told him before, I keep his chair warm for him down here. Also my former colleague Ms. Sandy Lee. As a little trivia point, there’s only ever been nine women elected in the history of the territorial Legislature and Ms. Lee is one of them. There’s not very many of us.
Question is being called.
---Carried
Mr. Hawkins.
I believe that. I have known this Minister and everyone on the other side of the House for a very long time and I do believe that, but it may involve necessarily setting something else that we do and spend money on aside in order to devote the resources that we need to this problem, because this is a pressing and critical problem which is absorbing so much of our resources. If we could curb it and stem it somehow, we could go back to doing those other things.
Will the Minister work with this side of the House to look at what things we now spend money on that are not as high a priority and could...
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are, obviously, for the Minister of Health and Social Services. In preamble to my questions I want to say that the Minister of Health and Social Services is not the enemy, the Members on the other side of the House are not the enemy, the issue that we are dealing with is the enemy. I’m sorry. I am sure that there is not one person on that side of the House who does not agree with and relate to almost everything that was said on this side of the House today. This is a collective problem. We have to find a collective solution.
I would like to ask the...
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Our theme today is addiction. Two and a half minutes cannot do this topic any justice because it is a very, very complex topic, but I am hoping that with all the different perspectives of my colleagues here today, we can send a message.
This is a topic I get very frustrated talking about because it doesn’t seem we have a plan, the tools, or maybe even the will to deal with it. I wish we could fully quantify and articulate the impacts substance abuse has on our residents, how many lives cut short. How the quality of life is diminished through the loss, suffering, pain and...
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We’re having a theme day. I would like to have a theme government. I would like the 16th Legislative Assembly to be remembered as the government that actually put their money where their mouth was in terms of addictions, and I would like to make that the theme of this government going forward. Will the Minister of Health and Social Services support that?