Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The principal job of an MLA is to carry the voice of their constituents into this Assembly, and today I am proud to do that on behalf of a student who is in the Aurora College Nursing Program.
Mr. Speaker, this young lady, who is a single mother, finds herself in considerable difficulty, primarily because of housing programs or policies within the college and also due to the increasing upward pressure on rent scales here in the city of Yellowknife.
Mr. Speaker, I am going to read to some extent from a couple of notes that I received this morning: "I am faced every month struggling to pay the rest of my rent as well as my day care fees, food, power, clothes and various other needs."
Her two-bedroom, by the way, she just received notice that it is going up to $1,300 per month. She already gets the maximum of $1,100 from student financial assistance but still has that difference to pay.
Mr. Speaker, she has tried numerous options to get further assistance but our system just does not provide for anything that she can really get a handle on. She makes the point very clear here in one policy area, Mr. Speaker. She says: "It is not fair that student housing be available to those from other communities and that us Yellowknife residents are forced to go south just to be able to afford rent while in school. I am from Yellowknife, I want to go to school here, but I can't get any help."
Mr. Speaker, we do so much already in the area of assistance for students, here in Yellowknife and in other college campuses, but I think a reality here -- because of the upward pressure on the cost of living and other circumstances that students may be in -- we still do not meet the needs of all of our people. Especially promising young women like this constituent, raised here, who went to school here all her life but now is facing probably the only solution she has, which may be to go south. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
---Applause