Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I, too, am in full support of this motion here. I thank the Members for bringing this forward and having the opportunity to discuss it. I want to thank Mr. McLeod for bringing some perspective in terms of his discussion.
Mr. Speaker, I wanted to congratulate and honour the leaders in the Northwest Territories, especially the Members in the Legislative Assembly who have done some work on themselves to stay away from alcohol and who have worked very hard to see, for at least myself, what life is like and opening your eyes every morning and seeing the beauty of life and seeing the benefits of not having to use alcohol, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I always bring it back to the point too that I certainly tip my hat to these people who can have a glass of wine and leave it at that. That's fine; that's just one of the things when you're dealing with alcohol, is that in some of the cases that at one time, as Mr. McLeod has pointed out, at one time it was normal. I mean if you look at 20 or 30 years ago it was normal. We have come a long way in government in not having so much normal, so much that at one time all our leaders at leadership meetings were coming in feeling pretty rough and looking pretty rough. I'm not one to judge, but that's what I observed as a young leader, as a young chief, Mr. Speaker. We have come a long way today when we're coming into meetings with our leaders; they're crisp, they're sober and they're on the ball here.
So, Mr. Speaker, we have done a lot of work. We have to remember the work that we've done because this is about 30 to 40 years alone in the Northwest Territories in terms of in the olden days and how it used to be.
Mr. Speaker, the one issue I wanted to talk about with this business in alcohol in terms of helping out with the businesses, you know we've got the major potential and projects happening in the Northwest Territories, Mr. Speaker, that there's lots of issues that have to be dealt around with businesses and how families are affected. Mr. Speaker, the issue of the lost time, I heard one Member talk about the number of hours that could be lost due to health problems and also to business issues. A lot of people in the region talk about these, that's a good worker, but, gee whiz, on Friday you don't see him, you have to find a worker on Saturday and Sunday. We're losing business. What is the government doing in terms of lost hours of labour, lost hours of employment and then we expect to have a Mackenzie gas project come down the Mackenzie Valley and see what can happen if we don't look at this issue on many fronts?
Mr. Speaker, I like the motion where it talks about denormalizing. For me, Mr. Speaker, I'll say it again, this is to somehow give the communities, give the regions better resources, let them deal with their own solutions in how to deal with the alcohol issue, the drug issue. It's basically to give the people the opportunity to deal with it on their own terms. We have one treatment centre here, Nats'ejee K'eh that's being used on the Hay River Dene Reserve for all the North. How long have they been working in the communities to deal with this issue here? Somehow if we think out of the box, give the regions and their community some money for them to use to see how best they can deal with this issue here. I think that way it will help to know that people who know, for example, people who come from the land are going out to the land to work on themselves, small families, not groups of 20 or 30 but small families of four or five, families go out on the land for a week or two to talk about some issues in their life.
It's all about life, Mr. Speaker, when we talk about it and how do you deal with life without using alcohol. That's something that I like about this motion where it talks about denormalizing. When you deal with the hard life of the loss of your family or the loss of a friend or the loss of a job or just the work of getting either fired or being laid off, how do you deal with that? A lot of times we grab the bottle because it becomes our friend. We haven't ever in the Northwest Territories, under this here, really talked about the effects of alcohol and alcoholism in our communities. We have never really talked about the strategy of why our young kids are using alcohol so much. What is it that we are doing as leaders in terms of telling our youth? They hear it up here, but do they get it in here? The youth can read, but do they really get it in their heart about the power of alcohol, because it's something that they're doing today that's giving them something that we can't give them. Really think about it.
I congratulate and applaud the people who have put the bottle away. That's the easy part. The hard part is keeping it away because there's so many reasons, Mr. Speaker, to grab the bottle again and drink it and have a sip. There's so many opportunities and excuses to have
that, pressure on us, especially as Members of the Legislative Assembly and our families. We have every reason to speak to you to have something like that. That's why I said I applaud the people that can have a glass of wine or a beer and leave it. Unfortunately I'm not one of them.
There's a lot of support groups now today. There's Yellowknife and our communities and our region. We've got workers in our communities. Thirty years ago we didn't have that. The Government of the Northwest Territories recognizes alcoholism as a disease, a chronic disease that's treatable. That's all, but what are we really doing? I'd like to see more of it done. The Minister has indicated that we're looking at some solutions. So I really applaud him. I'd like to work with the Minister, the department, to help do as much as we can do to get the youth off the drugs and get them on the land. The older people and the people in the communities always said take them on the land. I really didn't understand that, Mr. Speaker, until I went down to Hay River on the Dene reserve and I talked to an elder there. I asked him what is that you mean about this because I really couldn't get it, and I was working at the Nats'ejee K'eh as a counsellor. So I asked him what is that I keep hearing, go on the land, go on the land, and the elder on the Hay River Reserve said take them on the land. The first couple days get them to learn about the land, set nets or set some snares or help around the camp for two or three days. Maybe by the third or fourth day that person's spirit is going to wake up and when that person's spirit wakes up, that's when you go and grab him or her and teach them. They'll never forget. In the community it is too busy. You've got CDs, you've got these games going on, you've got sports, you've got friends and something happens, but on the land something else happens that's very powerful. So I thanked the elder for that wisdom and wise things to say to us.
So we are doing a lot. We have a lot there for our people. We have to show the people who get on the land you pack your own water, chop your own wood, don't go into a treatment centre because everything is going to be provided for you. Your food is cooked for you, your light, your heat, it's all there for you, it's easy, it's not normal for people who grew up on the land. You've got to use your mind and you've got to exercise your spirit. Take them out there and work for their life. We have called it a sickness here in terms of dependency. Alcohol is just a buddy there and friend to blame us for not doing enough, blame us for the problem. Look at Tl'oondih, how come we're not supporting Tl'oondih?
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We've seen the program.
Mr. Speaker, I want to thank Mrs. Groenewegen for bringing this motion up and talking about it. I tell you my heart saddens because I have lost someone really close to me because of this and I did not want to speak about it because I know how hurt we were as kids and how our eyes were when we had to experience that situation. I speak for many in the Northwest Territories how their parents, grandparents, and even as my colleague from Range Lake talked about the people in Colville Lake, how the elders look when they talked to us about this issue in Colville Lake. They're fighting and they're asking us for help, but the elder said in Colville Lake we can do the program, we've got the lake and the land right in front of us. That's our treatment centre. We've got to think that way, Mr. Speaker.
I know there's some really, really good people working in Nats'ejee K'eh. I know they put their heart into it. I know the work they've done, people in treatment centres. But, Mr. Speaker, I want to say this and I want to thank the Member from Hay River and the Member from Range Lake for supporting this motion. I want to say to the government we have done a lot for our people. We've done too much to a point where now they're depending on us to sober them up. We haven't given that responsibility to them. Take them on the land and get them to learn about the responsibility for their own life and how hard it is to stay away from the use of alcohol or drugs for people who have done that in their life. There's some really good role models, there's some really good ones. Get them off the alcohol and drugs and get them on the land. That's what the elders' message is and that's what I'd like to confirm that we've been listening to them. So I wanted to say that, Mr. Speaker, that to denormalize this again for the people that I speak for that come from the land here. To deal with this, Mr. Speaker, it's a spiritual issue here in terms of our land and I can't explain it because you have your own sense of spirituality and that's your own. There's no right or wrong, just that we've got some major projects, we've got some big things to look after in the Northwest Territories and we've got to deal with this bigger issue here of alcohol use because our kids are worth it.
Mr. Speaker, in closing, I wanted to say that from this issue here from alcoholism, it has taught me a lot. It has taught me how to be human and it's taught me how to deal with issues without having crutches, to make excuses, and it's taught me a lot of life. At one point in my life, it really hurt me. So I wanted to say that it's a good motion. We should have some more discussions, talk to our people, talk to our region. We've made a lot of headway, but I think there's a lot more to get done. However, we are going to discuss that hopefully in the future assemblies and hopefully that is discussed in our communities in terms of what we can do. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
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