Thank you, Madam Chair. In the small communities, I know that, okay, we are dealing with lots in small communities. We have mental health issues. We have addiction issues. We have suicide issues, especially among young people. You know, with all these social issues that we have, we have a lot of homelessness too, just like the one that I mentioned and we have a lot of youth that are in care in child welfare system. So I just wanted to ask -- like, I mean this government needs to do more with sports and recreation. And we need to provide more programs and services, especially to small communities. And like my colleagues have said, you know, when Arctic Winter Games comes or Canada Winter Games, who do you see? We see people -- you know, young people. We don't see too many of the outlying communities or small communities youth. We see same youth every year until they age out or, you know, until they go to university or leave for post-secondary, but it's always the same family, same affluent people, youth, families, or whatever, you know, like, I mean, it's the same. It's the same all around. And there's nobody new.
Just like, for example, in my community, one of the youth that I mentioned is from another community. She participated, attended the Arctic Winter Games because she was going to school in Behchoko at that time. She was attending Chief Jimmy Bruneau. So she had a chance. She had to move away from her community. And a lot of these youth, that's what they do is that if they want to participate or have a chance to live a good life or to have a chance attending, like this high performance athletic, you know, for sport, they have to move to Yellowknife or to other regional centre where there's more opportunity for them. And there's nothing like that in small communities.
For example, in Gameti, you know, they don't have a youth centre. And a lot of these communities, they need programs. And in order to access some of the programs, they're saying there too that to be eligible there's got to be ten youth. And if you go to Wekweeti, there's like -- you know, there's not too many youth there. So a lot of these communities are disadvantaged, you know, and I'm just thinking of a lot of those other small communities like Wekweeti in the NWT. Like, we need to do more and lift some of these barriers so that all these communities can have access where they can send their kids to participate freely so that at the next Arctic Winter Games, I hope we don't see the same youth from the same family. You know, like -- and then, and from one place. I would like to see variety. I would like to see more of our young people from the small communities because they are the -- for us, for me, they are the champion because a lot of them are dealing with mental health issues. A lot of them are dealing with addictions, suicide. A lot of social issues in small communities. And I'm real proud of my two pages that are here that are from small communities, and it is one of their friends that attended our school who made it to Arctic Winter Games. So she had to move away. We shouldn't have young people leaving their community, moving away to participate, to have a chance. So that's why I'm saying that this government is not doing enough. Even for here, you know, like recreation funding, 1.2. And 1.2, that is not enough. And 1.2, and then there's that healthy choice initiative.
We all want our young people to make good choices. Like, all the social issues that I mentioned, how are we going to -- we would all like for our youth to do well, to get -- you know, like to have more access to social programs where they can help themselves too as well and know that a lot of these youth, they don't want to be in that situation. They want to do something good for themselves. They want to succeed in life. But if the way that this budget is, we're not giving them a choice. We're not giving them a chance to succeed. They're just -- they're going to be left behind. We're going to leave them behind just like as within the education system. We have a lot of good teachers, and we have a lot of young -- we have a lot of people -- just like my colleague said, there's a lot of people that would like to volunteer. We have a lot of those in small communities that are willing to help the youth because we know of the social crisis; we know of the social issues that our youth are faced. And crack cocaine is the number one choice because we all know that is cheaply made, and it's cheaper to get, you know, and they're dangerous. And there's lots of that in small communities.
So I just wanted to ask the Minister he's funding healthy choices initiative, is it -- how is this fund allocated? Is it by need or by application?