Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My reply to the opening address is in regard to the whole area of the deficit situation we find ourselves in, which we made some hard decisions, but we have managed to do. It is time that we refocus the efforts of ourselves and this government to start looking at the whole area of the social conditions we find our
communities in and also looking at the economic conditions we have to start developing that sector to ensure we have the resources and jobs that stay and develop in the north for northerners. It is great to have diamond mines, and basically, oil fields, but at the end of the day, if it is not employing people from our surrounding communities bringing down the independence on our social programs, we have to say, what are we doing wrong? We also have to consider looking at the whole aspect of how we distribute wealth within this government from the larger centres to the smaller communities to ensure the communities also have an economic base they can depend on.
One of the most important issues, for myself, is the whole question about healing and having healthy communities. We have to ensure we have better educated people. We have to ensure that we have a healthy workforce and improve the lives of the people in these communities, so they realize they can have a better life and, through those better living conditions, the family will also be able to benefit from these healing programs. I believe there has to be more emphasis put into social development, especially when it comes to alcohol and violence and the whole community that it has an effect on and how they deal with these problems. In regard to the whole process of this government where social services used to administer a lot of these alcohol and drug programs out of Yellowknife which, at the time, seemed like it was more accessible for those interested groups who wanted to develop programs to ensure the communities were able to benefit from them. With the decentralized process, we find we have given a lot of these responsibilities to health boards and also the extra burden of having to deal with the whole area of the cost of medevacs and ensuring that the health care system improves and taking a cut at the same time. These pressures we have put on the health system and the regional bodies have an effect in regard to improving the lives of people in communities.
There has to be more emphasis made to improve the lives of people in the communities and in empowering them. We have to allow them the ability to take on responsibilities for their lives and for the decisions they make on a day-to-day basis. We cannot continue to treat communities with silk gloves, where we say we are going to empower them. We have to give them the adequate resources to carry out programs and services in their communities that will affect them. The different communities are doing a lot of good work, but they are doing it with limited resources, where, in other areas within the government bureaucracy, you have departmental staff who oversees different sectors of this government, who are paid on a full-time basis and receive benefits to concentrate on one particular sector. The area I am talking about, for example, is the Income Support Programs we deliver in our communities. I use Tsiigehtchic, for example, where they receive $4,000 to administer a program this government delivers on behalf of all people in the Northwest Territories, but in the small communities, they get $4,000 to deliver a program for a whole year. This does not make sense.
We have to start looking at, when we talk about empowering communities, I always make reference in this House to the Tl'oondih Healing Program. For myself, I have seen the results of that program when it was up and running. We saw a major drop in violent crimes in our communities, a drop in alcohol related incidents, and we saw a real improvement in our education system with the students taking a more active role for themselves and their families to ensure their kids were being educated.
We have to seriously take into account the concerns people have in how this government delivers programs and services on behalf of the communities and the people of the north. I believe we have, in debating a lot of issues in this House, we have spent a lot of our energy and time debating the way this government spends money in regard to office leases and pilot projects that are presently underway. We are looking at the whole initiative of block funding arrangements to certain communities, where they do not do that consistently right across the board for everybody. There are certain pots and programs being allocated to different sectors.
I believe we have to start seriously looking at the economics of communities based on what they have within the geographic area. We have to start considering the tourism oil and gas potential that these communities have, as well as the forest potential. One thing we seem to keep coming back to is the whole area of the renewable resources sector. Everyone knows there are moose, caribou, fish and wildlife that people can depend on instead of importing food products from the south. We have to start developing that industry in the north and depend on the resources we have in the Northwest Territories. The cost to the government, in regard to social funding when it comes to food subsidies or food baskets, has to be looked at in the context of what can the community or the regions offer to bring down the cost of food in the Northwest Territories?
We have to also look at the economic area of tourism potential the north has. We have thousands and thousands of lakes, fish lakes, thousands and thousands of caribou herds where people will pay money to go there, to fish, to take a look and see the wildlife for themselves because nowhere else in the world are there free roaming herds of caribou in the hundreds of thousands. In other countries, a lot of the wildlife has been totally eliminated by over harvesting.
We also have to start looking at the area of developing a healthy, educated workforce. We have to ensure that when any economic opportunities happen in the north we have people who are educated, who have work skills in relation to those projects and also know we are going to get a majority of those opportunities in the Northwest Territories in regard to jobs and the benefits will stay in the Northwest Territories.
There is one sector this government has been lacking in with the resource potential that the north has regarding the revenues presently flowing to the federal government in Ottawa. I am talking about the Northern Accord Agreement which was signed in 1988 between the federal government and the Government of the Northwest Territories. Ten years later, there is no agreement on that. Yet we are still depending on the federal government for resources to fund the programs and services that we have. We have diamond mines, oil fields, forest products presently being taken out of the north and the revenues and royalties coming from those resources are going south to Ottawa.
On one hand, we are saying we need more money, more resources and more dollars to deliver better education and health care. Yet, those revenues and resources continue to flow to Ottawa. It may cost us a few dollars now to take on that responsibility, but in the long-term we talk about community empowerment, community control, and until the Government of the Northwest Territories takes that initiative to tell Ottawa and ensure those revenues stay in the north and those revenues will offset the cost of health care and social programs in the north, we will always stand with our hands out to the federal government and say we need more money. Until that time changes, we will not become a government with control of the people and the resources of the Northwest Territories.
One thing that I feel strongly about is the relationship between the Government of the Northwest Territories and the aboriginal people of the Northwest Territories. For myself, I spent many years working for the aboriginal groups in the Northwest Territories on claims initiatives. I strongly feel the decisions we have made in the last three years are putting us farther apart than we were when we came to this election, in coming to this House for the 13th Assembly. We have made decisions that have affected the well-being of aboriginal people in aboriginal communities. I talk about the area of social well-being of communities, the educational needs of communities and the whole question about ensuring they have control of their own lives. We cannot continue to treat aboriginal people and aboriginal governments with the colonial attitude that the federal government has always had over these people. We know what is best for them and we will take care of their interests, because we know what is best for you. That attitude has to change in the way this government deals with aboriginal people in the Northwest Territories.
In regard to Nunavut, I praise them for making that initiative to ensure Nunavut people have the senior positions in that new government and ensuring that they educate their people now, so when they do take on that responsibility they will be able to do it.
In regard to the west, there are continuing battles between the aboriginal organizations, the Government of the Northwest Territories and the band and hamlet councils. Having disputes they have in the different communities and having to be put on the same level playing field as any structure in this government, they have to have the ability to deliver programs and services and have the adequate resources to take on those programs and services. One thing that is lacking is the whole question of having the respect for communities to ensure they have the resources to take on these responsibilities and being able to develop programs and services in their communities of how they are going to take care of their lives.
I made a statement in this House yesterday regarding the violent crimes in our communities. We have to take the inspection on ourselves to say is it right for an aboriginal group to have to ask to deliver a program in their community, on how they think that they can better the lives of their communities by filling out an application or putting a proposal to a regional board who has to say yes or no?
In the whole area of job creation, we have to start developing the programs and services into our education system. We have to ensure that the basics in science, math and chemistry are built into the scenario of our education system, so people know when you want to fit into the fields of engineering, geology or nursing means you have to get those programs earlier on in your education, so that when you conclude and graduate from high school and move on to university, you are able to fit into those high paying jobs and high sector employment areas where there is a demand for those type of people.
We also have to do an inventory of what opportunities lie in our communities. We can talk of looking at the economic potentials for being a police officer, a nurse, a teacher, a social worker, an employee of the band or hamlet councils or becoming an employee of retail stores. We have to know exactly what those opportunities have. When we have more than 100 students going into the preschool programs, in 13 years, what opportunities are there going to be for those 100 students once they go through the education system. We have to know after these people have been educated, there is an opportunity, they know they are not just going to become another statistic so and so with a degree in his pocket with no job to go to at the end of the day. We have to ensure we develop our economy with the understanding that we have to generate those jobs, those opportunities and have the individuals feel comfortable that once they graduate from high school in Fort McPherson or Rankin Inlet, they will be able to go somewhere with the degree they receive for their education efforts.
The other area we have to start seriously looking at is the whole area of justice and the delivery of our programs and services at the community level, not just allowing to have people sit in a circle and help the judge make a decision. We also have to look at the area of enforcement and the area of when a person is incarcerated. When they are also taken into a program which is developed by the community to deal with people who have tendencies of violence, anger, alcoholism and drug abuse, to assist those people, so when they do get in trouble, there is something there that can assist them. When they do come back to the communities, they have had an experience of either taking a program, so when they do get home, they are helped to deal with their anger, violence, alcohol abuse that they have been under for years, put them in the system already.
We cannot continue to have these institutions where we just rotate people from one month to the next, where they come out for a couple months, they go back to jails, young offenders' facilities, then come back to the communities and do the same thing, over and over. We have to develop a scenario where we develop healthy communities, but also have a say in the communities of how you want to develop these programs and services and how you want to deal with inmates, the people who come from your communities and have a say on exactly how they are dealt with.
I strongly feel we have to spend more time and effort dealing with the problems we see happening in our communities, violence in schools, violence in communities, alcohol and drug problems we see in our communities and allow the communities to specify how they want to develop a program or deliver a certain service to their community to make the lives better for those people they serve in those communities. We have to start spending more time and resources in allowing communities to take on these responsibilities and not for us to take the onus that we know what is best for you. They have to have the resources and the ability to say, we want to set up a correctional facility on the land for people with minor offences, so we can take them out there, deal with their anger and violence and deal with the family that the violence was affecting, at the community level, so we do not continue to have this violence continue in the communities.
I believe we also have to look at where our funds are being expended to a point where we continue to look at supplementary appropriations to offset the costs of overtime for guards because they have to transfer inmates from a community to a correction's facility, back to the community for court, back to the correction facility. All that is costing the government money. We have to start finding new ways of dealing with those problems at the community level and start considering looking at institutions at the community level so that they can take care of the problems in relation to the youth and people who do find themselves involved in crime.
The other area we have to seriously look at is the traditional values of the communities, especially from the aboriginal perspective, of ensuring they build into programs and service delivery, the traditional aspects of the community, so the younger generation understands what their cultural background is, so they know where they come from, so they know the history of the people and so they know what they did before contact with the Europeans. Why were they able to survive in this climate in this country for thousands of years and succeed to where they are today?
We have to start developing that, not only in the area of leaving it up to our elders but working along with the elders to take that information, compiling it and preserving it for future generations. Also developing it into our education systems and programs that we deliver on behalf of this government and finding the resources and time to take that on. You see the aboriginal groups around the world. We talk about the Navaho Nation, how they have been able to take over and develop their own Supreme Court, policing programs, education systems and social programs. We have to start looking at what we have to offer.
In the whole area of division, for myself, it is going to be a sad moment to see my colleagues from the east moving on and taking on their own responsibilities by formulating a new government. For myself, I have a lot of respect for the people in the east. I know a lot of people from the east. I have a lot of friends who live in the eastern Arctic. Seeing them go, is like seeing someone leave my home community knowing you will not be able to see them as often as you usually do.
With that, I wish the people all the best in the upcoming years. I believe the people in the west also have to realize we were a strong people by working together for the people of the Northwest Territories. We will continue to be strong by continuing in that relationship after division, ensuring that relationship of friendship will continue and to ensure that the next generation realizes we were a strong unique people. The more we work together, the stronger we will continue to ensure the lives of the people of the Northwest Territories.
With that, Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank you for this opportunity, colleagues in the House, and I wish you all the best for the Easter break. See you in May. Thank you.
--Applause
