Thank you, Mr. Chair. Before I begin, I would just like to take this opportunity to thank my constituents of the Mackenzie Delta for the opportunity to represent them for the next four years. I would also like to take this opportunity to wish them a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. I won’t have an opportunity for the rest of the week to say that. I will be seeing them throughout the holidays in the communities.
Mr. Chair, to begin with, I’d like to say we have a number of challenges up ahead over the next four years, as we all know, especially in our economy. With the downfall in our economy, it’s known that we have to focus on infrastructure spending, projects like the Mackenzie Valley Highway and also the extension of the Fibre Optic Link from Inuvik to the Yukon.
Over the last few years, now that we have cell service and Internet within communities, we’ve had outages through the last couple of years with the disconnection of Fibre Optic Links, whether it’s in the Yukon or further south. As we have investors investing in our territory in Inuvik with the satellite stations, we need to ensure that we have no interruptions in the years to come. Having this extension of the Fibre Optic Link to the Yukon will ensure that there is no disruption. So, in order to have more people investing in our territory, we need to ensure we do not have any disruption.
We also have to work with our communities through the Building Canada Plan, and I thank the federal government for this program which gives the communities the opportunity to identify projects within the community to upgrade our infrastructure in the communities. Moving forward, we do have a commitment that this program will continue and we need to ensure, as a government, that we also provide the communities proper O and M funding and not cut back on our small communities.
Throughout the campaign, the cost of living was a major issue in my riding and throughout the Northwest Territories. I will use my riding as an example. The cost of gasoline in Aklavik at the moment is $1.99 per litre. Yet in Whitehorse, Yukon, at this very moment it’s 98 to 99 cents per litre. That’s a huge challenge we are facing throughout the territory. We need to come together and come up with solutions to this problem.
As one of our leaders said this weekend, we have to take a closer look at the food basket, the cost of essential food products in our small communities. We always talk about healthy living, eating healthy, yet the vegetables and day-to-day essentials that we need are the highest costs in our small communities. We need to work with our communities to ensure we bring down the cost of living. I know it was one of our priorities in the 17th Assembly, but with all the other priorities we had, we didn’t focus too much on this. I think this needs to be one of our number one priorities moving forward.
Also our languages, Mr. Chair. I know nobody has mentioned it yet today, but I strongly believe our languages need to be a top priority. Throughout our territory we have many languages that are struggling. I will just use the languages in my riding as an example, Gwich’in and Inuvialuit. Gwich’in is one of the languages that throughout our territory is somewhat endangered. Our schools – and I would like to thank them – are doing a great job in teaching the language to our youth, but we also need to think of programs for the middle-aged. We don’t have anything set up right now in Aurora College. I think that that needs to be started right away.
We need to think outside the box. We have different opportunities that we always see every day. For example, Rosetta Stone. Everybody today uses electronic devices and I believe this is a great opportunity to put our Aboriginal languages in the Northwest Territories through that sort of program and have it available to our residents.
Also what has been brought up a number of times over the last four years, and I have brought it up, as well, is in our small communities we have an employment rate of 35 percent. That’s almost 27 communities throughout the Northwest Territories. We need to set a target of at least 60 percent and ensure we meet that target over the next four years. My colleague Mr. McLeod brought this up earlier. Projects like the Mackenzie Valley Highway would create so much employment throughout our territory. Many of our communities that are cut off in the Sahtu would benefit, and also throughout the territory. With the closure of one of our mines, we have over 100 people who are going to need employment, even here in the capital and throughout the territory adding to this 35 percent.
We also have a lot of our employees who are ready to retire. In our last term it was set at about 40 to 60 percent. We need to ensure that our residents are prepared to fill those positions, and also offer more trades training in our smaller communities is what my constituents want to see.
Housing is a major priority that we need to focus on. There is a huge demand. In two of my communities, for example, we have a waiting list of up to three years. I have said a number of times throughout the last four years that the department is doing a great job replacing units, but over the next four years we need to work with the federal government and secure funding so that we can add more units in our communities throughout the territory.
Staff housing is also an issue in many of my small communities, especially for our teachers. Many of our teachers don’t stay in our communities because of housing. We need to fix this problem.
Also, long-term care for our elders. In the 16th Assembly our government made the decision to take long-term care out of our smaller communities and move it to the regional centres. Many of our elders want to live in the community they lived in all their life and we need to accommodate them.
Adequate funding for schools. Recently we have taken on junior kindergarten within our current funding level. Many of our schools in the smaller communities were struggling even before this initiative. So, we need to take a step back and provide proper funding to our schools in order to ensure that our students are receiving the proper education.
Mr. Chair, I just outlined a few of our priorities moving forward. As you can tell from everybody who has spoken, there are a number of issues on our plate for this government to ensure that we fulfill. Those are the priorities that I would like to see moving forward. There are a lot of issues we have in our communities, but we will be bringing those up over the next four years. Thank you, Mr. Chair.