Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I also want to join you in welcoming back the Members from a good spring and from a good spring hunt if you went out and did some spring hunting and come back to work. I want to use this Member’s statement, as I did in my last sessional statement, to offer my condolences on behalf of the Sahtu region to all people who have felt loss in their communities of their loved ones. From time to time, as I said in my last statement, we get so busy with our jobs and as we do many things in our small communities, especially when we have close relationships with our family members, it gets pretty hard when a person leaves us.
Like my father-in-law has said, when the good Lord wants you, then the Lord will take you no matter what you do. It leaves us in our communities with a sadness of a loved person leaving our community and the impact it has on our lives.
The beautiful thing in all the Northwest Territories, we even see it in larger centres, is that people pull together, strangers pull together no matter what and offer condolences to the families, to the grandparents or aunties or uncles, but people come together. That’s the beauty of the humanity of the people of the Northwest Territories. I should say that in small communities, because it’s more intimate, that we put aside our differences for the day for the family and we support the family.
That’s what I wanted to say, how much the people of the Sahtu have done this in their communities, in Colville Lake, Fort Good Hope, Norman Wells, Deline and Tulita. Even the community in Tuktoyaktuk, or here in Yellowknife, people in the Deh Cho, the Beaufort-Delta, Akaitcho, right down the valley people pull together in hard times and I want to say how important it is to teach those types of traditions and values to our children.
I wanted to say and offer to the families who’ve lost loved ones since the last time we had a sitting, and I’ll get back to business tomorrow on the Sahtu needs. Thank you.