Thank you, Mr. Speaker. While we as a government deal with the COVID pandemic, it will and is becoming very clear that we will need more resources to address the needs of our residents. People will look to the government to help them during these trying times.
While we face this pandemic and all that it involves, we also have other ongoing issues here in the North. Some of the issues have been called a crisis. I'm speaking of issues like housing; health of our people; the cost of living; our children in care; protection of our vulnerable women and children; infrastructure needs, just in the town of Inuvik alone; and economic development, as just some examples that my constituents bring forward.
Mr. Speaker, while we are not in normal times as a result of the pandemic, unfortunately, some of the other issues that I just mentioned are far too common and normal for my community and for the communities of the North. It's my opinion that these issues of things like housing and our children in care do not need to be considered normal, and we as a government need to do as much as we can to ensure that Canada understands that the issues we face are not normal, but at times in fact are unacceptable. We must find ways to ensure that the federal government invests not only in normal operational issues, but invests in the resources that we need, as a government, to address these issues we face and what some people consider normal.
I will have questions for the Premier later on how we can better access federal resources to deal with our issues, because the investment dollars that I'm speaking about, just for my community alone, will require a massive federal investment, and that is long overdue. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.