Thank you, Mr. Speaker. One time in our life, I remember growing up, we used to eat at home. We used to have porridge when we were young and growing up in Tulita.

Sorry, when we were young. When I was growing up in Tulita, I remember, when I was young, I remember before we went to school Mom always got us up early and we made a fire if it was real cold in the house and heat up the little pot there and make porridge and we all would sit around and have breakfast, have porridge or have some wild meat, then we went to school. That was the lifestyle that we grew up with. Slowly on, Mr. Speaker, we started to see that the school had hot chocolate, macaroni and hardtack during lunch and I think a couple of times during the week. That was really good to have food in school, Mr. Speaker.

Little did I know, Mr. Speaker, even at that age some kids would come to school without breakfast. They had hot chocolate and macaroni, hardtack and they just really enjoyed eating that in school.

Just recently we started to witness and even hear children coming to school without breakfast in our communities. That is unheard of. You know, then I started to see where school and the community started working together to raise money working with oil companies or working on different projects that they started to get extra dollars to bring the food into the school and have a program going there. That was one of the best moves that the schools in the communities have done, bringing breakfasts into the school. A lot of kids aren’t eating breakfast anymore. That’s the way we have it now.

The government has invested $400,000 into this project. We looked at it and it’s a good project; however, we don’t have the money, so it might not

be funded anymore. Take out the nutritious foods, healthy eating in the schools, you guys go fend for yourselves. You go negotiate with the oil companies if you can get a deal. You raise your own funding. Our schools are into fundraising initiatives now. Kids should get good credit for fundraising to the programs they go to.

This government here is for the people, by the people and even those little people’s health. And they’re worth it. They are worth the investment. Surely we must reconsider this and give up something or sacrifice something for the good of the little ones, for an investment. Somewhere we can take some money out and put that back into the school or help the school. Just don’t drop the ball on this like a hot potato in the communities. We can look at somewhere where we can work with them. I think that’s what this motion is saying. That’s why I strongly support it. We cannot let our people go hungry, especially the little ones. We’ve done this, Mr. Speaker. It has cost a lot in our communities and by not investing, it’s going to cost us more, I think, I’m afraid.

I think this government here has very been vocal in some of its initiatives. They’ve showed some great leadership in some of their initiatives, that they can give this type of initiative another look at and see where this motion can be supported and they can look back and say where can we find the funding. For example, do you know that we have over 180 inmates in the North Slave Centre here and every morning their meals get wheeled to them? I think they could sacrifice breakfast for these little ones here. That’s something we should look at. We’ve got to think about everything, how we can bring this money to the little ones here.

So, Mr. Speaker, I would just say this is a good motion and I’m going to be supportive 100 percent.