Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I want to say mahsi to my constituents of Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh for putting me here to speak for them. Also I want to thank my family, my wife Aleta, who is at school teaching right now, all my children. And I just wanted to take this time to reflect about when I was first elected to the Assembly here.
As a Member of the Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh riding, I bring to this Assembly the concerns and priorities of my constituents. Since taking office, my efforts to advocate for my riding been met with limited acknowledgement and commitment from outgoing GNWT Premier and Cabinet. I'm hopeful that now with a full term ahead of us and the opportunity for new leadership, this change for the 20th Assembly building relationship and partnership.
Mr. Chairman, when I was first elected on February 8th, 2022, in a by-election, I heard clearly from my constituency about what are very important to them and near and dear to their hearts. Outstanding is completing the Indigenous governments modern treaty and self-government agreements. I heard this every day since I been in this office here, winter road to Lutselk'e. I brought this to the House and they said well, I'm sorry, we got no money. Affordable housing, homeownership repairs, high-speed internet, commercial residential lot development. Kosmos 954 public inquiry, I raised that in this House.
Federal day school, April 1st, 1969, that's when the Government of Canada transferred the federal Indian Day School to the territorial government. But after that day, the abuse continued to happen for 26 years thereafter. Again, that needs to be addressed and talked about.
Also, the most important that keeps coming up, and I got to raise it here again today, is the Environment and Climate Change raid into Timber Bay culture camp. My constituents of Lutselk'e are asking that this government needs to apologize for that raid.
The other issues that I want to just briefly talk about is this, again, in my campaign trail I went to door to door in the communities. I listened to the elders. You know, the issues are -- in this campaign are no different than the last campaign. But there were some changes that were brought up.
The issues of winter road, and now they're talking about barging services and dust control in the community of Lutselk'e. The other issues is that MACA really has a limited amount of money is for residential lot development in our four communities. We haven't seen no new construction in our communities for a very long time. It's getting to the point now where housing corporation are buying old units or units in the community so they could build their own units in the community. That's a concern in my riding.
Mr. Chairman, the Kosmos 954 is a big one that I brought to this Assembly as well. I'm asking for an apology from the prime minister and also financial compensation. Since 1978, in April, we had a Russian satellite that came down, and it had debris coming from the east of British Columbia going to -- sorry, west from British Columbia going east and going over Hay River, Fort Resolution, Lutselk'e. There were debris found all the way up to Coppermine. And they had uranium that was in the atmosphere. They say it burnt up. But the people and the elders of my riding are very concerned about that because we have a lot of cancer rates after 1978. And that's something that needs to be looked at.
Mr. Chairman, also the Taltson hydro, we have graves that are in water that are 60 feet down when they flooded the water in that land in that area. The elders in my riding are asking to move those graves and before we even talk about doing any more expansion on the Taltson hydro.
The issues that come up I want to talk about is the Dettah school. In 1972, those ATCO trailers are -- it's been retrofitted over time. And not long ago I heard it was on the capital plan. It was taken off. At what point in time do we, you know, make the decision about building schools in our community? Education is an Aboriginal treaty right. And I want to remind that we have taken an oath to recognize that when we swore it here the other day. And we must continue to not lose sight of that.
The other issue that my colleagues talk about is the federal -- or sorry, the treatment facility here in the Northwest Territories. You know, this treatment facility that we talk about is -- it can't solely be beared only on the GNWT government because we got a very limited budget. The Government of Canada really needs to step up on this one here because we have residential school, federal day school. They got to take ownership of that. So having said that, that should include proper programming, probably include housing, aftercare, community-based programs, etcetera. We got to figure that one out. I did bring that up in the House as well.
In most communities in the Northwest Territories, we have new band offices and community halls. In N'dilo, we have an old gymnasium that was built back in 1978, and it's under size. The community, it's outgrown -- or sorry, the community's outgrown the community hall now. That needs to be looked at. That's something that I want to continue to advocate for our community. But my concerns is that, you know, we got -- we're going to have settled claims here in Northwest Territories sooner than later. And I had mentioned to my colleagues in the last Assembly and, again, I'll continue to advocate it here today, is that we must continue to recognize those constitutional protected land claim agreements. And we may have to look at some kind of constitution going forward. I think that's something that we need to talk about.
But, Mr. Speaker, I know we got limited amount of time. But I just want to talk about briefly is the state of affairs of this government. As much as we want to talk about all the stuff that we want to put in our communities, at the end of the day I think I heard from my colleagues that we had to put our house in order. And if we don't do that, you know, what do we do then? I often said that we may have to review all the government departments because it -- we can't continue to do this. Mr. Speaker, we got $2.2 billion budget. We are $1.6 billion deficit plus another $200 million added to it. Who's to say that this government here, and once we get the new Minister in there, they're going to come back and ask for more money? I'm concerned about that. This should be a full independent public review of the fire season that just occurred and the floods that happened. That's a concern that got to my attention. That impacted my community as well.
The thing is that the NWT is taking a huge hit on the economy and the GDP. The mining industry are winding down. They're now going to reclamation. Our young people need jobs. And we got to look at new ways to stimulate the economy here in the Northwest Territories. Right now -- as well, CBC reported that we lost over a thousand people. I think it's at $40,000 per person that we get from Ottawa. That's $40 million of our budget. At the same time, we -- our -- I keep thinking about the 3P initiatives that we undertaken as well. You know, we're paying down the hospital. We're paying down the bridge. You know, our dollar's getting really stretched. The question is how are we all going to come together and manage that? We all have needs in our community. And when I brought this stuff to the last Assembly, you know, the Premier said the train left the station and if you want anything on that train, try to put your luggage on there. Well, that train's took off already. So I have an opportunity here to really express what are the needs of my community. But overall, you know, the state of affairs of this government at this point is not really good.
The carbon tax, right now the Government of Canada had said that they're going to stop the carbon tax in western Canada. But here in the Northwest Territories, we got to go back and revisit the legislation on the carbon tax again, because the people in the Northwest Territories are paying high already in fuel costs and the carbon tax we have to pay on top of that. It's costing us anywhere from 1,800 to $2,400 just to fill up your fuel tank. So that's the reality.
At the end of the day, Mr. Chairman, is that we got to really look at our house. We got to start living within our means. Housing is a big issue. It's so bad that, you know, the housing corporation gets a budget, our finance people put money into its shared expenses, it's close to over $200 million. But yet at the same time we're hurting at the local level for housing. And right now, the Indigenous governments are not going to Ottawa and get their own money for housing. And then so why do we have a housing corporation? In 2038, CMHC's going to pull that funding away from them. They're done. So we got to look at that. So I guess at the end of the day, Mr. Chairman, is that this government here, we got to start living within our own means. And at the end of the day, we all got to work together and we have to build new relationships with Indigenous governments, industry, all stakeholders. With that, Mr. Chairman, thank you.