The Chair Leon Lafferty

Mr. Nitah.

Steven Nitah Tu Nedhe

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Sometimes I think this government should use the number of hours used as a statistic instead of percentage of employees, especially in the area of affirmative action. However, Mr. Chairman, four of us, including yourself, when we exclude Cabinet, represent 28 communities. Yet, we don't have much more resources than those Members who represent one community or one community having seven Members. It takes a considerable amount of time, energy and resources to represent all those people, all those communities and all those interest groups.

For that reason, Mr. Chairman, I encourage the Speaker as chairman of the Board of Management to look at ways to improve our budget, so we can have people employed in each of our communities that we represent, so we could bring information from those communities and we could send information through the constituency assistants to the Members of our communities. Not only political direction but if RWED has a new program, we could inform our constituents through that office. If Education, Culture and Employment has a new program, we could inform our constituents through that office. Currently it's very difficult to do that. A lot of us at this time of the year have to consider laying off staff members that we have. We usually have one here in Yellowknife. It's not equitable to hire one staff member in Res and not one in Lutselk'e. If a person like yourself Mr. Chairman, represents three communities, you can't hire three people in each community because you don't have the budget. I think it's high time to recognize the workload that each Member has in their representation.

I don't know how many times we have said in this House we are experiencing unprecedented levels of development, political development. I have an Akaitcho Territory negotiating implementation of treaty. It's a government-to-government relationship with this government and the federal government. I represent the Metis Nation of the NWT. They are doing the same thing. I have three diamond mines in my constituency. We have a pipeline going down the Mackenzie Valley. We have all kinds of other developments. That takes our time. We just finished the Special Committee on the Review of the Official Languages Act. That took a lot of time. We had to create a special committee to review the relationship between this government and non-tax-based communities. That takes a lot of time. We just agreed to establish another community to look at harmonization a little closer. That's going to take time. That takes time away from our families and our constituents. I think it's only fair that this government recognizes it. The Members need the resources, so the Members can do the jobs they got hired and elected to do. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The Chair Leon Lafferty

Mr. Speaker.

Some Hon. Members

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