Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my Member's statement has to do with the lack of services and programs in small communities in the Northwest Territories, Mr. Speaker, and the high percentage of population in the smaller communities. Mr. Speaker, in smaller communities we lack the services of qualified social service workers and most of the services that social services gives are on an as-needed basis. Like in Colville Lake we only deal in isolation, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, the increase of alcoholic rate instances seems to have more and more of a devastating effect on these smaller communities because of the number of people. Yet, in most of the small communities, Mr. Speaker, we don't have drug and alcohol workers to deal with these issues on a consistent and daily basis. Mr. Speaker, in the small communities we seem to be dealing on an emergency basis only. Like the example we had in Colville Lake last year where they had the TB scare and all of a sudden we had the nurses and Department of Health and Social Services come in there and stay there for months. Mr. Speaker, we need to get away from these emergency situations and deal with them in a good manner.
Mr. Speaker, we in our small communities are experiencing an increase of economic development activity, especially with a project like the Mackenzie Valley pipeline. We need help to review the projects, such as the people from Fort Good Hope said that we need the money to look at the work that is going into the Mackenzie Valley project. Mr. Speaker, the small communities are dealing with their alcohol issues. Again, like Fort Good Hope, they did a voluntary ban to keep alcohol out of the community and other communities that are dry. Mr. Speaker, that leads into the presence of RCMP in our communities, like I said last year in Colville Lake when they asked for the RCMP to make their presence known because of a high increase of alcohol coming through that community.
For these small communities, Mr. Speaker, as an MLA we fight for these things that other communities deserve. They talk about our roads. Our roads are really dusty in our communities. In large centres they're paved, they're well maintained and they take it for granted. That's what we think in small communities.