Thank you, Mr. Speaker. On June 24th to the 26th this past summer, I had the honour
of sitting in a meeting with seniors from around the region that I attended and worked on a seniors meeting entitled Working Together to Address Seniors Issues. It was a follow-up to a meeting that some of the stakeholders, some of the coordinators did when they came to Yellowknife and had a meeting with the NWT Seniors’ Society.
A lot of really good discussions happened during those three days, and we had seniors from Aklavik, Tsiigehtchic, Fort McPherson and Inuvik. They were bringing up issues that meant a lot to them, and anybody who was in attendance that day could see the passion and the hardship that our elders go through on a daily basis and that continue to occur.
Today I want to bring up some of those issues that the elders addressed as they broke into their focus groups by community to see what kinds of solutions they could come up with. Things such as language interpreters, whether it’s through the justice system, through the health and social services system, even the education system, and that’s been brought up in this House over the term of the 17th Assembly.
Other things: lack of RCMP in the communities, lack of health care in some cases in some of the communities, as well as on-the-land programs not for treatment but to create awareness, increase our culture, go back to the traditional values they feel are being lost, and working with youth.
Of course, they wanted to bring up something that has continue to occur, and Members on this side of the House have spoken to it on many occasions, and that’s the elder abuse. Other things that we’ve talked about which were kind of addressed and we’re trying to deal with within the Child and Family Services Act are child welfare cases and concerns, and our grandparents are continuing to foster care.
Things such as housing is another issue, and working with youth. In fact, just recently our Children First Centre in Inuvik went and visited our elders at Ingamo Hall and had a great day with them, I think just a couple days ago. As well, home care is needed to be addressed.
Mr. Speaker, I seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement.
---Unanimous consent granted