Mr. Speaker, every priority this Assembly has set is interconnected and interdependent. This means our challenges are connected and our stories are converging. We must ask: how does inadequate housing in Tlicho communities drive the affordability of housing in Yellowknife? How does the trend of centralized government services impact economies and empowerment in small communities and regional centres? How does the lack of skilled workers across the territory increase our cost of doing business?
Members repeatedly say we are only as strong as our weakest community. We are all reliant on the success of every Northerner. Everyone wins, and it is not a zero-sum game. We are in this together, and no one should be left behind. Our system relies on trust, empathy, generosity, and a common desire for all of us to succeed and thrive in healthy communities.
Mr. Speaker, over the next two months, I will speak to all parts of this system, starting with housing, then healthy families, healthy economy, sustainable lands, and community empowerment.
The government is a human system, driven by purpose. If our collective purpose is healthy communities, what are the indicators that paint the picture of what success looks like? Achieving healthy communities relies on many components of the system working together. People need affordable, accessible, safe housing to have healthy families. Our healthy families nurture knowledge, and knowledgeable people feed our healthy economy through meaningful contributions and retained labour and resource benefits. This all feeds into socially and environmentally sustainable care for our land and community empowerment through a recognized right to self-determination and control over land, culture, language, and community-based decision making.
Our role is to raise the North up, to create a learning system that sustains and inspires itself. Underpinning each part of our system, Mr. Speaker, is connectedness, relationships, and democratic participation. We can't change the North by standing here and telling people what they need. We need to listen. Every Northerner must have a voice on the direction of policies and processes, attracting economic development, promoting the North as an incredible place to visit and live, and in healing the deep wounds caused by residential schools, systemic racism, and colonialism, a destructive way of thinking from which we all must heal.
I look forward to discussing this with Members, each of whom brings a valuable perspective to the whole system. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.