Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Before I begin, I should thank Mr. Menicoche for reading probably the best part of my speech. He seemed to have scooped me today. Mr. Speaker, when we were on the road doing pre-budget consultations, one of the issues was the housing conditions, and how the disabled and our elders are treated under those conditions.
Many of the residents across our NWT are on fixed incomes. I am referring to the seniors and disabled people, Mr. Speaker, so they have very limited resources to spend on their homes. We heard, especially in many communities, that there was no one there to help fix those homes, let alone even if they did have the money.
Mr. Speaker, regional centres like Yellowknife realize that a lot of these seniors have fixed incomes so they can't even afford to fix these homes. So what is this government doing? We heard a lot about the communities that the only people out there that can help them are the local housing authorities' maintainers, who have to help them on their off hours because their priority is the social housing units. So good on them. They truly are the local heroes in those communities. Many of these housing maintainers do this on their off hours. I don't know if this government ever takes a moment to pause and say they are truly putting their responsibility of taking care of those folks on their backs, which it should be on the government's, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, taking care of our seniors and disabled people needs to be more than just lip service. It needs to be a principle carved into the walls of this Assembly. We need to take care of seniors and the disabled, period. That needs to be a mandate. I know Aurora College runs a housing maintainer program out there, so why are we using our local authorities to work with these housing maintainers in their training? Why are we doing things like creating a little training trailer unit to go out there and have our maintainers work, get skills, education, and help our seniors and disabled communities by helping those seniors who have leaky windows, doors that don't swing, and things like that?
Mr. Speaker, I know we can do this under the NWT Housing Corporation, but I think it has to be led by the Education Minister to start thinking outside of the box. The bottom line is, we could be doing two wonderful things and have it accomplished. As I say, skills being taught to our people at the local level and taking care of those people who need it most. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
---Applause