Mr. Speaker, my communities of Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh are facing challenges on the scale they never experienced before. These challenges include serious increase in criminal activity, drug use, and mental illness, which are affecting especially our youth. As important as it is to provide our youth easier access to addiction support and keep the streets safer through increased RCMP resources, I am afraid that these solutions are only addressing the symptoms and not the cause of the problem. What my communities need to prevent our youth from falling into the trap of addictions in the first place is a proper recreation and skill programming that can enrich their lives and open doors of opportunities for them to pursue their dreams or practice their culture.

Recently, my community have lost recreation coordinator positions which were responsible for providing youth and sports with recreation programming. Lutselk'e and Fort Resolution, in particular, are left with great recreation facilities but have no funding from MACA to provide maintenance, staffing, and programming. Instead, the First Nations are responsible, and they can't always keep these facilities staff and operating with all these services for the youth.

The youth are looking for safe, healthy, and active programming. My communities are also coming to me with creative proposals to establish local youth advocates who are skilled navigating the services different departments have to offer and resourceful in the opportunities youth can access, not just sports related but opportunities for large cultural revitalization, skill development, and career counselling. We need to reverse the trend of closing services in small communities and empower community leaders because they know what the youth in their communities need.

I look forward to asking the Minister responsible for these services about the ideas later today so I can return to my communities after session and start working with them to bring forward exciting new proposals. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.