Good afternoon. I would like to congratulate my colleagues on a successful campaign and now representing your constituents in your elected ridings.
I would like to take this opportunity also, too, to acknowledge Cece McCauley, who was an advocate for women in leadership and who is also an advocate for the Mackenzie Highway. It's an iconic and historical moment right now that we have nine women who are elected into the 19th Legislative Assembly. I would also like to acknowledge Ethel Blondin, who was a mentor and how had held her seat as the MP for the Liberals, and who has mentored me through this process. With her humble experience, she has given me the tools to go forward and to represent my region.
Also, I'd like to thank my region for selecting me to be representing the region as the first Indigenous woman to represent the Sahtu in the 19th Legislative Assembly. It's a humbling experience, and it's an honour.
Going forward, I would like to express that the need for my region is huge. We're talking about education and healthcare, looking at economic development, mainly looking at the bridge and the opportunity that it has to offer; looking at tourism from the Tulita bridge and the Mackenzie Highway; and building relationships with our Indigenous groups.
Right now, in Colville Lake, I would like to concentrate on that community because we do have a school system that is existing there right now. The school system is very poor. I has a one-room classroom. We have teachers who are there, who are committed to be there, with no housing. The housing there is limited for water and sewer, and the children are being taught in this environment.
I would also like to look the learning disabilities, as well, in the school system, and looking at filling the positions. I'm familiar with the Jordan Principle, and Tulita and Deline have taken those initiatives into hiring an extra person to be dealing with the ADHD, the AFS, and we also have the Down syndrome students.
I would like to be able to work with the education system in the Sahtu to integrate those students with the school system, because I went into the school and they are kind of left to their own, and they are not incorporated with the rest of the students. I found it really sad to see that, in this day and age, we don't have programs and training for these teachers' assistants who are showing their commitment to be working with the children with disabilities.
Looking at our healthcare system, during my campaign there was a number of situations and scenarios that were expressed. One of them was, again, from Colville Lake, that there was a child who was severely situation and they had called the health centre in Inuvik and got direction from the doctor to say that their needs were not so severe. The parents ended up driving the child from Colville Lake to Good Hope, which is a three-hour drive; it took them nine hours, and the child was in agony, so much pain. They got to Inuvik. A medevac was called. He was sent to Yellowknife. They didn't have the resources to help the child. Later on, he was sent off to Edmonton. During that time, the child was enduring this pain and was sent to Edmonton, and the doctor in Edmonton said that the child should have been medevac'd directly to Edmonton right from the beginning.
These are the kinds of situations that the community of Colville Lake is experiencing right now. The other thing is that they also have their nurses' facility is probably smaller than the offices that we work in, and those offices, there are three of them and there is a gym that's attached to it, as well. I don't feel that these are adequate facilities for the nurses to be working in. The nurses come in every three months, and I thought right from the people who are suffering from heard disease, diabetes, that they don't get the adequate medical care that they need.
I was looking at prescriptions that they acquire, who delivers them, who sends them in, how we take care of our patients in the Northwest Territories. I know that Colville Lake is not our only isolated community; I think of the communities in Nunakput, as well. I think that together as the Northwest Territories, as a government, as the 19th Legislative Assembly, we need to address these concerns and we need to not let them result in death, at the expense that we're not dealing with the scenarios in these situations right now. I feel that the majority of them can be preventable with the proper and adequate care that we need.
I would like to move on to the Tulita bridge. I'm in support of building infrastructure to the capacity. We need these projects in order for our regions and our territory to survive. We need to make the money. We need to get our residents, as well. You know, with these major infrastructure projects comes education and training, as well, and education and training are significant. We need that in order to survive as the Northwest Territories. Projects like this, we need to emphasize on trades. We need to make sure that a lot of our people who are involved in these projects walk out and they actually do have certification. Also supporting our local business, as well, and not going south in order to pursue these contracts, that we try to keep the money in the Northwest Territories.
I would also like to emphasize on tourism throughout the Northwest Territories. I think there just needs to be a lot more promotion on it and available funding, and how this program actually works. I think that acquiring small businesses in each of our regions, in each of our locations, this will build our capacity, as well, and education needs to be supported among this, as well.
I would like to also comment on our land leasing policy and our projects that we have that are out there currently. I know that we do have housing and our land leasing are in conjunction, and they do go together. Our housing projects don't meet the needs of our residents in the smaller communities, compared to the tax base.
I think also that the land leasing policy also requires that the client needs to have a land lease in order to pursue a Housing Corporation package. Right now, we are leasing at assessed value, at 5 percent annually. Those lease payments could be about $2,500 or $3,000, which is not affordable to a person who is on a pension, who is on income support, and who is trying to move and become independent in their own region. I think we should bottle-cap our clients in order for them to go forward. We need to really structure and look at a way that we can deal with these scenarios.
Looking at the community lands and the land development, client change is a significant issue, as well, because there is limited area for the communities to actually expand. Looking within my region, there is limited expansion for each of the communities, because we do sit on a riverbank. With the bridge coming through, it's going to open access to lands that they are not able to access right now, so the development and planning needs to be considered.
I am concerned because it's actually going to open up the access to the Great Bear Lake by Deline, and they are known for their tourism and their fishing, so I would like to look at that and see what we can do as a government to try to protect those areas.
Also, I would like to just touch a little bit on housing and share with you that, during my campaign, I went to Fort Good Hope and I had a conversation with the K'asho Got'ine district, and they actually had a housing initiative that they had taken on between the federal government and the GNWT where they actually deal with their own housing initiatives, and they are actually their independence to go forward and to start housing repairs on behalf of their clients in the region. So I think building those relationships with our Indigenous groups is important. We need to start really emphasizing on that, because at the end of it they are our economy, they are striving for a land claim, and they are in self-government negotiations right now.
I would like to work towards that, because I would want to see what the government is going to look like once those self-government and land claim settlements are done. What is our responsibility, what are we going to be looking at, and where are we going? Thank you.