Mr. Speaker, some years ago I remember going to one of the small communities. I was hosted by a family, and when we got up in the morning, we had some breakfast. I couldn’t believe that a family that was feeding the child breakfast cereal…. They had water there, and they had Coffee-Mate. They were making milk for the child. That’s their milk, because the milk is so expensive in our small isolated communities that have no roads, have no opportunity to purchase milk at a lower price. I sat there with the family, a well respected elder and mother, and they were making milk with Coffee-Mate, and they were pouring that for the children to eat before they went to school.

I asked some people in my region and my community: in the past what did you do? Our lifestyle has changed quite considerably from the nomadic life to where we are now in the

communities, where we have great dependency on the store, and Health Canada has been pushing to have milk as one of the primary products to have within our lifestyle.

Mr. Speaker, the price of milk is something that has been a big concern for my region. I’m just looking at some prices here. These are probably old prices. In Tuktoyaktuk it’s $8.99 for two litres. It’s probably gone more now, on special. And I hope it’s fresh. In Good Hope it’s $6.50. But another number, I think, is more reflective of the prices that we pay in our small communities now.

Mr. Speaker, I will certainly, definitely support this motion. I think there is something that we can do immediately. I think that the Food Mail Program will take.... You know, the government will drag its feet on that. It will have a lot of complications and challenges to implement a true Food Mail Program in the Northwest Territories. But this is something that we can definitely show our people in our regions that we are supporting the different guidelines that we are being handed by Health Canada, by the Government of Canada and this government, in terms of how we sustain a healthy life within our families, within our communities.

I hope this milk subsidy program sees the light of day by the time we get through the business plans in terms of how we implement something like that. It is so beneficial and certainly will help our communities in terms of them coming to the stores — not to benefit the Northern Stores — to benefit our people. Some of that milk sits on the shelves, and it’s past due date. They still sell it at full price. It’s a crying shame.

Today is when we have to check. In our community sometimes the expiry date has already gone past; we still have to pay the full price, though. I hope that now, when the students come and the families come into the Northern Stores, they have fresh milk there at a good price, and that’s something that they can afford, and they can now tell people in the communities, “We’ve got milk.”