Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I believe we need to enshrine in the Child and Family Services Act that no child shall be apprehended on the basis of socioeconomic conditions.
Now Mr. Speaker, I am well aware that many cases by the time child and family services have intervened are due to severe neglect or abuse and likely the time of intervention was long before child and family services got involved. To solve those issues is something all of us in the House strive to do but it is one that will take healing of a whole territory. However, Mr. Speaker, it is clear that there are still children being apprehended simply because their parents live in poverty.
Mr. Speaker, we may not be able to provide everyone with enough income to get out of poverty and we might not be able to, you know, end our waitlist in the life of the Assembly, however I believe a wholeofgovernment approach needs to make it a priority that whenever a child is facing apprehension the government provides every single resource it can to address those socioeconomic conditions, Mr. Speaker.
And Mr. Speaker, the sad reality is that this is probably cheaper for us to do in the long run. Taking children into care, operating the system, running apprehension trials, are extremely costly. Yet, Mr. Speaker, we do not presently provide those, our child and family services workers, with the resources needed to create truly wraparound plan of care agreements. I believe they need the power to provide housing immediately for those families when they are facing apprehension.
Mr. Speaker, telling a family to get on a hundredperson housing waitlist when they are homeless and facing their children being taken away does nothing. Telling a family that is homeless and struggling to provide food for its children that they have to fill out a series of forms does not help. We need to empower our child and family services workers to make sure that plan of care agreements provide all of the basic necessities of life for those children and we need to do that before they are apprehended, Mr. Speaker. I will have questions for the Minister of Health and Social Service about what we are doing to break down silos and make sure that our CFS workers have true access to immediate resources and wraparound services for children. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member for Yellowknife North. Members' statements. Member for Hay River South.
