Thank you, Madam Speaker. Yesterday, I was not able to speak on this matter, so I will now. With respect to the budget, I'm in support of it. There are questions with the funds being spent on the COVID secretariat; however, we always hear people say, "How much is a life worth?" Well, I say, "Is the life of somebody who passes away from COVID worth more than somebody who is an addict, or vice versa?" Really, all lives are important, and in this instance, we have something in front of us that could have really caused devastation. We have addictions, which is devastating in itself, but we focused on this one. We're talking $8 million up until the end of this fiscal year coming from the GNWT, but we moved so quickly on the secretariat; we moved quickly on COVID. Money was thrown at us from the federal government; we threw money in. What I would like to see is that we do the same thing with addictions. If we could move that fast on addictions, we can make a difference.

In Hay River, as well, we've had three or four young people pass away with respect to whether it was drug-related, or there is always something like that involved. Nobody wants to see anyone pass away, old or young, for any reason whatsoever. For me, I will support the motion. We can move money around. We can move it, but if somebody passes away from COVID, what do we tell their family? "Well, we saved some money. We moved it to something else. Maybe we could have saved that life, but we will never know."

What we need to do is we have to look forward. Let's look and try to make an impact on fighting addictions and fighting homelessness. Those are the things that kill people. Like the Member for Monfwi said, he goes for coffee or goes downtown. It's the same thing in Hay River. When I get home, guys are there. They're waiting for me, and they're looking for coffee; they're looking for money, whatever. Or sometimes they just want to talk to you, as well. Like I think I've told the Minister of health is that, at the end of the day, if we don't get a day shelter for these guys, what I'm going to do is: I'm going to move all the furniture out of my office and turn it into a day shelter until we get one if that's what we have to do because it's not just this government that has to take responsibility. It's everybody. All the residents of the NWT have to participate in this, and they do, in some sense. A lot of people, they give food. A lot of people will provide shelter. A lot of people will go and pay for fuel bills for people. They will pay their power bills because they know they're down. I think that it's just not on this government to make change. It's everybody, and that's what I look for. I look for participation, and I look for people to help out. In Hay River, we have that. We still have people on the streets, and when I hear that they're sleeping under the stairs or something at the old town hall, that's not good. We have to change that.

The other thing that came up, as well, in discussions, and I talked to the Minister of the Power Corporation of that, as well, is the issue of arears and limiters. To me, here we are; we're spending this money. Yet, we have people out there that maybe owe us $2 million or whatever. There's not a lot of them. I asked her, "Why don't we just find that money? We should try to find that within government and give those people a leg up and pay those bills for them because that amount of money means a lot to some people." Those types of things, and with limiters, that's the other thing, is why do we even? People go throughout the winter thinking that this might happen, hanging over their head day after day after day. Wake up not knowing if you're going to have power or not, so that's a problem.

The other thing, as well, is in Hay River where we have very limited public housing, what we're finding now is that people are actually moving in with people who are in housing. Of course, when that happens policies are getting broken and tenant agreements are being broken. Everybody's getting threatened to get thrown out of there, but they have no other option. What do we do? I would ask the Minister to consider making sure that if that has to happen, somebody's fleeing an abusive situation, so they move in with somebody that's living in public housing for safety. Let them be there. People say, "It's not safe because there are too many in the house." I grew up with seven sisters, a brother, and then my mom and dad were there. We had a two-bedroom house, and I'm still standing here today. I think I turned out okay.

We're getting so carried away with policies and legislation and liability, and it just goes on and on where we can't really do anything and we can't help people. I don't know. I look at what we do, and it's frustrating because I can see answers out there. Coming from the private sector, I just like to go and do stuff and get it done. Again, when it comes to the secretariat, that money is there. We're going to vote on it. More likely it's going to pass, but at the same time, I would ask this government: let's get a plan together. An action plan, not a strategy, we need an action plan to combat addictions, combat homelessness, and the real matter that will save people's lives and make their lives better. Thank you, Madam Speaker.