Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Speaking to the motion today, I am in full support of my colleague Mr. Krutko for keeping the Joe Greenland Centre open. The elders in the families in the communities, it’s hard enough for us to send our loved ones out of our home communities. It just puts a strong strain on the families. Not everybody has jobs. Not everybody has vehicles to go see their family either in Inuvik or in Aklavik, but at least we know if they’re in our region we can send meat or fish or something to try to help out and take care of them.
The people themselves, when they are taking elders from your home, like Ulukhaktok sending people into Inuvik, you know, when you’re paying an $800 plane ticket one way to go see your family, it’s tough. We have to take care of the people in regard to our elders a lot better than what we’re doing by taking this out of Aklavik. I know the people in that Joe Greenland Centre take pride in what they’re doing for the community and for the region. I think if it’s possible to leave funding in there for this year and keep on seeing if we can get extraordinary funding to run that facility, I think it would be a really good start.
Long term, the people and their jobs in the community of Tuk we did get an elders facility in the community and it wasn’t filled up for a few years but now it’s full. It is being utilized by elders and the community sends people in to help them out, clean up and stuff like that, but at the end of the day we wanted this to be a facility where we don’t have to send our elders out. We have families in Tuk that we send people out into Inuvik and the Joe Greenland Centre, which we’re really thankful for. To support the cause, I guess, to take care of our elders because they took care of us in the start, and by this I think we’re failing our elders and we’re failing the community of Aklavik and the Joe Greenland Centre if this facility shuts down.
Mr. Speaker, I will support the vote and I support my colleague Mr. Krutko in trying to keep this facility open. Thank you.