Mr. Speaker, in order to provide the traditional foods in any of our facilities, we must have policies on how to secure, prepare and serve the traditional foods. We already are providing traditional foods in a number of our communities in a number of our facilities. For instance, at Jimmy Erasmus Seniors Home they serve traditional foods and they have a policy. The Inuvik long-term care prepares traditional food within the unit itself. The Avens has a policy for the preparation and serving of traditional food. The challenge there is that they have a private contractor providing food, so we may not be getting it as often as we would like. Stanton Territorial Health Authority also has a four-week rotational traditional foods menu, so they bring things in on Friday. I understand that the Member is saying that is not enough, we need to do more. The Northern Lights Elders Facility in Fort Smith regularly serves traditional foods. So we are providing traditional foods in a number of our communities.
I hear the Member loud and clear, we need to do more, which is why we are working on the Traditional Foods and Facilities Action Plan, which I am going to bring to you and committee after discussion on how we move forward.
But this isn’t without its barriers. Providing traditional food does have some challenges, and some of the challenges that we have experienced today are basically the availability of regional foods, the distance from local foods, the ability to prepare foods in a traditional way, harvesting costs and access to the equipment, and food services companies using only federally inspected food. So there are challenges. We are working through those. We will be coming back to committee, and I am looking forward to having further discussion as we move forward and provide traditional foods to the residents of the Northwest Territories within our facilities. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.