Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I phoned communities in the Sahtu and certainly the people have a lot of concerns with the social housing here, and since it’s been transferred over to the Department of Education, Culture and Employment, things haven’t gotten any better. Actually, the one conversation that I had this morning was that it’s actually gotten worse and that it’s really hindering and frustrating a lot of people in my community because of the implementation that in theory looks and sounds very good but in practicalities, in reality, it’s not working very well. It’s putting a lot of people in jeopardy in terms of their credit with Housing or with their arrears. It’s changing a lot of people’s ways of looking at how social housing is being delivered in the Sahtu region.
I received two letters from two students who are living in social housing in Tulita and it doesn’t give a very good picture. I’ll be tabling these letters in the House for the Members here to read from these two students who are working very hard to get an education, to get a good job, to live in a house that they can probably say is theirs. They are doing everything that they can do to be productive members of society and in the Sahtu community of Tulita; however, because of the transfers and the difficulties that they are experiencing, it doesn’t seem like they’re getting very far. For them, they seem like they could only just say, what’s the use in trying? What’s the use trying to get a job, go to school and see if they can do any good for themselves? These young people who have families, who are working very hard to get into school, make some productive choices, but because of the system and the way it is, because of the Social Housing Agreements that were negotiated with the federal government, these agreements here don’t seem to be working for the people.
I think, Mr. Speaker, that we should really go after the federal government looking at these Social Housing Agreements and see how it has an impact
on the people in the Sahtu. These young students, they are very frustrated with the Housing administrative programs and they’d like something to be done. I think that it’s about time that this government is big enough to do something at this time. Thank you.