Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, today I wish to raise an issue about what is commonly known as the downtown problem. Mr. Speaker, as you mentioned in your opening statement of this sitting, we had the pleasure of a number of visitors to this Legislature prior to the session. While visiting with the women parliamentarians and the senior civil servants for the leadership tour, I was struck by one common topic that emerged from two totally separate set of visitors. After they each profusely commented on how friendly the people were and how beautiful some of the sites were, the women talked about how scared they were about walking through some streets in our downtown in broad daylight. One of the civil servants, who is an RMCP officer, spoke quite matter of factly about observing two drug deals that were going down in our downtown parking lot. Obviously, Mr. Speaker, through her expert eyes it was very plain to see.

We are well aware of the goings on in our downtown streets, but I am sure this is not what we want to showcase or make an impression to our visitors. Mr. Speaker, I know that the RCMP is aware of the drug issues and especially the youth being targeted. They have been working hard to focus their resources on that and they have also been working on other ways to free up resources and put them to more efficient use, but the fact is the RCMP in Yellowknife is stretched and they are not able to put enough boots on the ground as much as they need to. In looking at the numbers, Mr. Speaker, I know it appears as though we have a growing detachment in Yellowknife, but the fact is Yellowknife serves all of the surrounding communities without RCMP detachments and every time they have to travel to these communities, they are taken off our streets. They are also required to do a lot of admin work, which I believe could be done by civilian or other branches in the GNWT like court services.

Mr. Speaker, as I see it, the government must pay more attention to this and address it in a two-pronged way. One is we must undertake a comprehensive review on how we can reduce admin work or secondary work being placed on RCMP officers so they can spend more time on the streets. Secondly, we need to have RCMP officers in every surrounding community, so that they don’t have to rely on the Yellowknife detachment and if they are, these numbers should not be counted as Yellowknife detachment and inflate the numbers and, therefore, making it look like there are enough services. I am telling you, we need to do something about this downtown issue. We need more boots on the ground. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Speaker: SOME HON. MEMBERS

Boots on the ground!