Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I want to talk about something today. I know we’re celebrating our youth and all the good news stories, but Mr. Speaker, I want to speak about something today that, I think, needs to be brought up in a public forum and we need to create public awareness.
Mr. Speaker, many of us are parents and we do everything we can to protect our children, but, Mr. Speaker, at a certain age youth can be a danger to themselves. It’s a time when they are trying to assert power and control over their own decisions, and if we can keep them safe and provide guidance about wise boundaries to get them through these years, more often than not they will eventually see the dangers themselves and will impose their own boundaries on their activities and where they go and what they do.
Mr. Speaker, today I don’t want to speak about those threats. I want to speak about threats and dangers that are out there that are outside of a person’s ability to protect themselves if they are not aware of this. Mr. Speaker, there’s very little dialogue in our communities in the public, an awareness of something that is called, it’s a drug called Rohypnol and it is a date rape drug. If you speak to people in law enforcement in the Northwest Territories -- or anywhere in Canada, I’m sure -- they will tell you that this very little spoken of drug is something that is prevalent and it is used. Mr. Speaker, the insidious thing about this drug is that it can be dropped into a glass or into a drink and it’s affects leave the victim with little or no recollection of anything that happened to them while the drug had its effect; thus giving the victim a very low level of opportunity to give evidence against their perpetrators.
Mr. Speaker, these are not easy things for victims, then, subsequently to talk about and the people who would be able to warn others sometimes carry with them the stigma and the harm of such an event, which is life-changing, Mr. Speaker, and sometimes often never getting closure to this because it is very, very difficult for the law enforcement and for our courts to prosecute and successfully bring people to justice who would do this.
So, Mr. Speaker, later today I would like to ask the Minister of Health and Social Services or the Minister of Justice what efforts our government could be involved in to bring awareness to this drug that is very difficult to charge people who perpetrate this type of activity on other people and to warn our young people about it. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The honourable Member for Kam Lake, Mr. Ramsay.
