Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have a concern similar to Mr. Nitah, where some of the smaller communities cannot go to some of these games. There is a problem when you have an all-star team from the Northwest Territories which consists of players that have not won a territorial championship. When there is a team that stays home that wins a territorial championship, there is a selection from a different community, a larger community. The selection is done by people who are from all parts of the Northwest Territories, have never seen these players before, and some of them are never given the chance to try out. I have a concern with that.
This happened a number of years ago, and I think someone else mentioned it in the last sitting. What Sport North should be doing is they should be going to the territorial championship teams and saying look, you are our best team in the Northwest Territories. You select a few players from some of the other communities so we can spread out membership in the teams. I think we can sit down and should be able to get something constructive for all the interested members, along with the Sport North group there.
Another thing is this Aboriginal Sport Circle. When I heard about how they were going to set up the indigenous games down in Alberta for the next Arctic Winter Games, I was really disappointed in how they were selecting the teams to represent the territories. What they did was say you and you bring this team. You bring that team. They do not go by which teams are going to be the best team to represent the Territories. They just want representation from every community, but what they are doing is setting up some chance for failure. I was involved in one of the games. I am sure a few of the Members here might have been, where the way they did the selection of teams was just how I said. There is nobody from Inuvik, nobody from Fort Resolution, nobody from Fort Providence, so you guys have these sports. Rae-Edzo had all the championship soccer teams. They had all the championship volleyball teams. They could only bring one team each.
There was a good baseball team in Hay River. They could not bring that team because they were not selected for baseball. Some other team was selected for baseball. When I went out to support one of my teams from the Northwest Territories, I was watching our team get slaughtered. The score was ridiculous. There are no mercy rules, either.
We set up our teams for failure. We cannot continue to do these things. Because of that, I support Mr. McLeod in saying why can we not put an aboriginal person in Sport North along with who we have there already, and maybe just look at the Aboriginal Sports Circle again? Is it the right thing we are doing? What kind of mandate do we have? Who are they representing? I know that they have been having problems with the people in the North Slave because that is not the way you run sports, you know. North Slave were the first ones to go to the Aboriginal Games down south. They brought three busloads. Then the next year the Indigenous Games came and Sport North got involved. So it was being done before Sport North. What I am saying is, yes, let us work together, but let us do it right. I think with the people interested, the MLAs, the volunteers, I think we can put it back on track again.