Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This morning I was looking at some of the stats that I’ve been compiling, and one of the most frightening stats that I picked up and started to read had to deal with the shocking report that the Department of Education had compiled. It has to do with our future of the Northwest Territories and our small communities, and it’s startling and it’s frightening. I was wondering: how do we work on this and get this to be something that we can celebrate? It has to deal with the results that the consultants found in our children in our small communities.
The results were showing that 50 percent of our kids who are now, today, at this time, in our schools, in our small communities in the Northwest Territories operating 50 percent lower than what they should be at. That is doing an injustice to our kids who are… We are sending them to school knowing that this is the fact, that as politicians, as leaders, this is what we’re allowing.
We are telling them, out of the goodness of our heart, to go to school, get the grades, because there’s going to be jobs out there when you’re done. The job may not be in your community. If you look at the unemployment rates in all our small communities, it is not a very good picture, unless you’re living in Norman Wells or you’re living in Simpson, Hay River or Yellowknife because you’ve got a better chance at working.
Yellowknife’s employment rate is 79 percent. It’s 75 percent in Norman Wells. But if you go to Deline or to Fort Good Hope, it’s less than 50 percent. So there’s a 50/50 chance that you’ll get a job there. If you don’t, well, the government will take care of you through the Income Assistance program, unless you go to university or college, and then you have to get maybe a Master’s program to get into your required program. So, we’re in trouble, Mr. Speaker.
I’ll have questions for the Minister later on.