Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I, too, will be supporting the motion. I, for one, feel, as I’ve stated many times in this House, that a government is measured by how it treats its most vulnerable in our society. What we’re seeing statistically and looking at the results of what poverty does, just look out in our large cities with regard to homelessness, people having to go to food banks, people having to go to relatives’ homes and sleeping on their couch because they have nowhere else to go, visiting each other so you can share the food that you have with a family member, or in some cases having the whole family living under one roof because they cannot afford to be in social housing or to strive on their own. They need the support of each other.

Poverty is alive and well in the Northwest Territories, yet as a government we continue to spend millions of dollars for big corporations, the diamond companies, to develop infrastructure which should be paid for by the private sector regardless whether it’s office space. I for one feel that we as a government have to do a better job to deal with the poverty-related issues which are confronting us every day, whether it’s walking down the streets of Yellowknife or Inuvik or our home communities. We see these people come into the band office, or my office as it’s in the same building in Fort McPherson. There are 20 or 30 of them

there for the lunch program because that’s probably the only good meal they’re going to get for the whole day. It’s sad to see, but that’s the reality of what we’re seeing in our communities.

With that I will be supporting this motion.