Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I’m looking forward to the revised mandate as well. I know that the mandate document is a very, very big document. Sometimes, you kind of tend to look at the mandate and have a lot of difficulty really prioritizing the mandate. There is a lot of and it’s a huge document. The larger the mandate gets, the priority the each of the items get.
For me, I look at the mandate and I apply certain things that I’ve come here to do. I come to the Assembly and then I always said and I feel that any mandate items that provide employment to our citizens and in across the territory is a good mandate item. There are items that can be measured by looking at the improvement and the employment numbers across the territory. I’ll look at the mandate items and I look at how it applies to the wellness of the community or wellness of the GNWT. I look at the mandate and decide whether or not or that if the correction facilities are beginning to empty out because people are well and whether or not the hospitals are beginning to empty out because people are well. Are there items in the mandate that address that issue? I look at the mandate and I apply education to it. Are the people getting more educated? Are people graduating at a higher rate? Are people preparing for jobs by getting training and so on? I look at the mandate and say to myself, “Is it taking care of the seniors?” The seniors are our most respected people and are we allowing the seniors to age in places a big mandate item? An important mandate item that I speak about often in the House and I think that the mandate items I do that and are important.
I look at how they support families in the GNWT. Does this mandate at the end of the day provide proper supports for people suffering from addictions? Does the mandate provide good health to the citizens of the Northwest Territories and good housing? Does this mandate address the cost of living? Does this mandate address early childhood development? How much of this mandate is targeted towards probably the greatest investment that any government can make and that is in early childhood development starting with pre-natal healthy families.
I know that the mandate has junior kindergarten in there. We’ve asked for daycare programs. Any of those types of things that are there to address early childhood development that will support the families that will move forward. We start to see the results by higher graduation rates. We have people in our small communities that are graduating at a rate only slightly above 50 per cent. We know statistically that once you graduate, even from grade 12, it opens the door for higher education. It also does one important thing. It gives you an 80 per cent chance of getting a job. Otherwise, you have less than 50 per cent chance of getting a job. I know that that’s an important aspect and once people are educated and they’re working and they get away from the addictions and so far, I look at this mandate to say, “Well, are those things being achieved by this mandate?” It’ll be interesting that at the end of our term when we evaluate the mandate to see if those aspects were covered and have things improved as a result of this mandate and the work of our government and the work of our members in this assembly having proved the situation for the people of the Northwest Territories.
For me, that’s what the whole idea of a mandate is. I look forward to help revising the mandate and then measuring the mandate to see if it’s done what it has achieved and what it’s intended to do. Thank you, Mr. Chair.