Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the dictionary definition of empowerment is to give official authority or legal power or to enable. The subject of empowerment has been brought up, debated and
conceptualized considerably by the 13th Assembly. There are three areas of empowerment that I would like to touch on today as they relate to the responsibilities and role of this government. Community empowerment has by far been the most focused on by our discussions. I still believe that we need to take a really common sense approach to how much and how fast we devolve responsibilities to communities. At a time when government's functions in other jurisdictions much more populated than our own are realizing the benefits of consolidating community governments, we must be cautious in how far we go in devolving authority to communities with small populations. We need to ask ourselves if there are intermediate forms of consultation and participation that would achieve quality input.
I was very impressed with a meeting that I had recently in Hay River with all the regional directors from almost all departments. I thought the regional authorities and offices had a very good take and handle on the issues in communities in their region and particularly for regions with numerous small communities, I believe there is merit in devolving a lot more decision making authority and discretionary latitude to the regional offices as a stage in community empowerment. Key premises for empowerment are the development of people and skills to allow them to take responsibility for themselves bringing decision making which may have been distant and inappropriate in the past closer to the recipients of the services, programs and infrastructure.
A recent article in the Nunatsiaq News illustrates just how far we have to go yet in our northern society in another type of empowerment which gets talked about much less. That is the issue of individual empowerment. The writer of the editorial is chastising the petition makers of Iqaluit for their outrage regarding a local librarian's future. The writer raises the issues of children falling asleep hungry because parents cannot buy food. The kids begging for loonies in front of the local store so that they can stuff their aching bellies with candy. Hundreds of people jammed into overcrowded disease-ridden houses or walking the streets with nowhere to live. If these conditions exist in Iqaluit and other northern communities given the amount of money that this government expends on every kind of program that you can imagine, it indicates to me that we have created a level of dependency on this government that we can no longer afford that can only be addressed by empowering individuals with the tools necessary to help themselves. Mr. Speaker, I seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement.