Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’m really happy with the budget that’s been provided to us, especially seeing the enhancement to early childhood programming in the rural remote communities. That is really going to be a big help for the communities that I represent up and down the Valley in Tuk, Sachs, Paulatuk, Ulukhaktok, especially with the monies that we’re getting for support with…(inaudible)…support for regional sporting events. That’s going to be able to bring the youth in from the outlying communities. I think this year, Mr. Chairman, they’re heading into Fort McPherson for a soccer tournament or a basketball tournament. They’re flying in from all over the region. So I look forward to going over and supporting our youth in sporting events like that.
The $450,000 regional youth officer positions to support youth and programming also in rural and remote communities was really good to see, because this year we had a little bit of problems in Ulukhaktok for the settlement maintainers. So it was really good to see in the budget that Ulukhaktok, Sachs Harbour settlement maintainers, so it could properly maintain the schools and all the government buildings. So that’s good to see. The overall school replacements I’d like to see for next year so I could get the addition for Mangilaluk School put in and I’ll be pushing that this year.
Our formula funding for the communities was really good to see so our communities or our hamlets’ community infrastructure funding is getting a good $28 million in the budget once passed. I think that’s a really good opportunity for us as a government to help our local community governments succeed in what they’re trying to do and cover the shortfalls.
The airport infrastructure improvements, this year we’re getting the two airports in my riding. So I’m looking forward to the grand opening of that with the Minister. I look forward to that, Mr. Minister. Good job.
One thing that we do have to worry about is with the health care in our communities where our doctors and the dental teams coming into the communities that are such a short time frame. I asked this last year, just making sure utilization is to the max in regards to that, because we’re having to send kids out to Inuvik now for dental and it’s not maintained, it’s probably taken out. So we have to really start working with the local health centres to see if we could help them with that.
Another one is housing. We still have a real shortage of housing units in the community. So what we have to do is… Especially in Sachs Harbour and Paulatuk and Ulukhaktok, those communities are short units. So I hope we could put somewhere in the budget for this coming year if we could get one or two units extra in the communities.
Like Mr. Yakeleya said earlier, our power costs in the community and the cost of living is 80 percent to 300 percent cost difference in regard to just general items to try to feed your family. It’s pretty tough. You know, I have a family of nine, so it’s “Kids, chew your food slowly.” The cost of living is really great. If you’re not a two-income family, it makes it tough. Not only that, not everybody has jobs in our communities. The biggest thing is ECE has to come on side in regards to maximizing and giving and they’ve got to really see if we could work on the allocation of the funding that they’re getting.
Other than that, right through the whole budget I’m happy, and I look forward to going through the page by page with my colleagues on a go-forward basis of this and getting this job done. Thank you, Mr. Chair.