Mahsi, Madam Speaker. I rise today to speak about sports in the north. My colleagues, Mr. Pudlat and Mr. Zoe, over the last few weeks have raised issues about the status and support to various sporting events and support to communities to host sporting events in the Northwest Territories.
In sports there are many people involved; there are the athletes, there are officials, cheerleaders and organizers, and they all participate one way or another. There are many sporting events and gatherings in the Northwest Territories. We have regional community games which mainly focus in on northern games, which include the Arctic sports and the Dene games. We also have indigenous games, as was mentioned by Mr. Zoe. The next set of annual games are in the United States. There are spring carnivals and festivals in most communities. We also have Arctic Winter Games and Canada Games.
These events, Madam Speaker, help keep our people busy, especially our youth. There's an adage that if you have a healthy body you're going to have a healthy mind. So that's something that we should continue to support.
There are several questions that have to be raised, though, and that is are we focusing our energies on the right events; are we spending our finances supporting the right things? Madam Speaker, these are issues which concern organizers and athletes in communities, and these are the ones, especially in small communities, who don't have a lot of corporate sponsors to turn to so that many athletes don't have the opportunities to get the experience and get to places where others are more fortunate to get to.
I would like to just say that this government has to look at and review how and where our financial support for sports in the Northwest Territories is going. Mahsi.
---Applause