Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to say that it is good to be back here again, or maybe not so good, depending on what kind of questions I face in the House...
-- Laughter
...but we are here to do a job and that is what we are here for. I just wanted to talk about a number of things that happened through the summer. I know that everybody is very busy as Ministers and Members, and even our people in the communities have been very busy. It has been a very busy summer, a lot of activities.
One of them that I want to mention is the North American Indigenous Games in Winnipeg, July 29th to August 4th. It was a huge, successful event. I was fortunate to be there at that time for the first few days. I was involved in the opening ceremonies. I think the Northwest Territories, we had a huge delegation for our size compared to the other jurisdictions. We had teams from all the provinces and a number of different states from the United States.
I just wanted to mention about the Midget Girls Soccer team, 16 players, most of them are from Fort Simpson, my constituency. As MLA, I would like to mention their names because they did very well. They came home with the silver.
From Fort Simpson, we had Christina McAdam, Veronica Antoine, Jennifer Thistle, Carry-Anne Loutit, Jesse Loutit, Shannon Sangris, Jenny Thompson, Jodi Thompson. We also had Fort Liard player Sabrina Diamond'c. Even though the other girls are from other communities not in my constituency, but if I do not mention them -- well, they are part of the team. Fort Resolution had Jody Miersch, Jessica Sanderson; Yellowknife had Sara Steven, Siku Allooloo. Inuvik had Charlene McCarthy and Sheenee McCampbell. The coach was Val Genderin of Fort Simpson. The Manager was Connie Loutit.
In the round robin they played Manitoba and Ontario, each of them twice and they won all the four games. They advanced to the final against B.C. but unfortunately they lost out to B.C. and they came away with a silver. Going into the tournament, only two of the Yellowknife girls played on the outdoor field. They wanted to play their hardest and score at least one goal in the tournament. They outdid themselves and the total they scored was 30 goals. All of the girls got along and showed great team spirit.
This is a good opportunity for young people in the North to look forward to the next indigenous games three years from now in Buffalo, New York. Thank you.
-- Applause