Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I will be voting against the budget today when I cast my vote. It's not against the working relationship we built in this Assembly or against our hardworking civil servants. It is for my constituents. They need a budget that truly supports them and a government that listens. The people of Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh tell me -- people, every day, that the government is not working for them, and I agree. I cannot stand by while my communities lose their young people to addictions and mental illness and why elders are forced to leave their home community due to lack of local medical services or long-term care facilities.

I cannot stand by as my people struggle with the high cost of living. And I mentioned in this House, Mr. Speaker, that -- on numerous occasions on the 19th and 20th Assembly talking about the community of Lutselk'e in my riding about a winter road. And the high cost of living in that community is very high. And instead of looking for solution, it seems like we continue to put up barriers.

So Mr. Speaker, I struggle with the idea of the cost of groceries in the small communities. Everything's flown into the community of Lutselk'e, and it's very expensive. And jobs become harder to find. This government could do better, Mr. Speaker. The land is rich in resources, and the people are rich in culture, traditions, and traditional knowledge. But the poor living continues do not reflect the true wealth. Don't take my words for it, Mr. Speaker. Look at the government's own statistics. More homes are needed than ever before. More children are living in poverty and more food insecurities continues to rise. Homes are falling into disrepair as the public housing backlog grows. High school graduation rates for Dene students are well below the territorial average, and employment in the public service remains out of reach. These numbers will only grow worse if this government continues to do nothing.

Mr. Speaker, as this chronic underfunding isn't enough for my riding of Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh is now facing a funding cut while the territorial debt limit has increased by over a billion dollars. Where's this funding going, Mr. Speaker? Not to the Dene communities. We couldn't even keep up our own community learning centres open, and the department blamed enrolment rates, blaming the students. These centres have to be more widely used if their programs were more relevant and culturally appropriate for my communities. So all the money saved through the budget cuts and borrowed debt says in the GNWT headquarters because this government can't imagine making decisions without an ever-growing workforce to commission studies and assessments without community input. We see this government knows best attitude every department. Mr. Speaker, that draft -- they draft their plans, ask questions later. Then they hire a consultant to tell them what went wrong. When I bring up the priorities, my chief and Metis presidents and elders, I'm told that civil servants, they never heard those concerns. That's because they don't truly consult Indigenous governments. Then I'm told that whatever priority they've ignored is not real priority but a political priority as if I'm asking for a handout for the Dene people.

This is the same old story, Mr. Speaker, despite promises of changes after the last election. The Premier, when he talked about his 50-year vision for the cooperation and thriving self-government, or the deputy Premier vision of the GNWT working with empowered and accountable regional authorities, focused on Indigenous reconciliation through the dialogues and relationship building. What about the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People that were passed here? And it's a mandate for First Nations to self-determination, autonomy, and decision-making.

UNDRIP may have been passed in spirit but the implementation is still missing, and we see the consequences of that inaction in this budget, with lack of consultation and cooperation with Indigenous governments, closing the CLCs in Dene communities exposes all the false promises.

Mr. Speaker, we all want a dynamic, collaborative North where Metis and treaty rights are respected, but this budget is not known how we build the future. This budget kicks their can down the road to the next government, leaving the problems for the next Assembly to solve. Sadly, this not the fault that any one Minister or department, it is how our government operates. Our mandate for change conflicts with the GNWT mandate which seems designed to outlast any political leader's agenda. The stubborn refusal to accept change is a result of our territory not having a Constitution, which we need, to force the GNWT uphold the treaty and Metis rights and the international rights to self-determination.

But until a Constitution is in place, many of the changes my people are demanding for their families and communities will not happen. So today, Mr. Speaker, I am voting against this budget, disappointed that despite everyone's hard work in this chamber, we are not making progress for my people and for all Indigenous communities in the North. Some may say my colleagues and I are playing politics, but my politics are about action. The only way to fight against the politics of inaction is by taking a hard look at our own territory and this government and the results we're getting. Without change, all the hard work means very little. Just the same old social problems week in, week in, and year after year since 1967, no action.

Mr. Speaker, I will keep working for my constituents no matter what. I will speak the truth every day as long as I have the privilege of being a Member of this Legislative Assembly for good people -- for the good people of the Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh. I'm not attacking anyone. I'm attacking -- I am attacking the outcome that hurt my people.

Mr. Speaker, earlier this week, I put an invitation out to the infrastructure Minister to come to my four communities and meet with our Indigenous governments. Let's put on the table what their needs are: Dettah, we need a new school. N'dilo, we need a new band office, a new gymnasium. Lutselk'e, we need a winter road. Fort Resolution, we need a new water treatment plant. We need programming for our young people. Dust control in Lutselk'e is bad during the summer months. I hear that from our people every day when I go back to my communities. They text me; they phone me; I meet with the leadership. When I bring it here, sometimes I feel like I'm talking for nothing.

But I have the privilege of working with some really good colleagues around the table, even on Cabinet side. When I come across to say that these are things that I'm looking for my community, it's no disrespect to my colleagues or Cabinet. That's what I'm sent here to do, to speak for the people in my communities. Housing is one component. It only is going to fix up part of the problem that exists in our small communities.

We are in a housing crisis here in the Northwest Territories. I sat on the AFN housing committee for three years at the national level. And right now we're probably pushing over 200,000 homes short in Canada for all First Nations. Here in the North, we're probably about 10,000 homes short. But yet, you know, through the progress that we have here today, I can't even get the housing corporation -- or Housing NWT to fix one of my Members in Lutselk'e sewage tank because it's -- backs up 16, 17 buckets of 5-gallon pails of sewage for a single mother, a cancer member who's in remission and struggles. And I try to figure a way how we can try to address some of these issues, it's really tough.

The young people in my community, I mentioned before, I've been to so many funerals, and it really hits home when it's our young people. So we got to do something about the addiction issues. We got to do something about the RCMP stepping up in our small communities to do their jobs. This government pays $80 million to the RCMP. I bring it to the Cabinet. I bring to the Premier. I bring it to the justice Minister. And I still get calls from leadership in my community. So we have big problems here in the Northwest Territories, and the small communities need to be heard. And it's my job to bring it here. But I'm also trying to figure out a way how we could work with Cabinet to look for solutions.

One example is that even though Housing NWT's got a $199 million budget, that's just to pay for the operation of existing LHOs and public housing units. But I knew that there's a lot of homes in our community that need -- that home needs homeownership repairs. So I had to start thinking outside the box as a solution and put forward an idea to the finance Minister and to the Minister of housing. And it was a really good idea. And the idea is that we want to go into our four communities to inspect the homes.

In the early days, we had the HAP unit that was provided by housing -- NWT Housing Corporation funded through CMHC and Government of Canada. That ended in 1993. But since then, a lot of our homeownerships are reaching the lifecycle of 50 years and if we don't do something now, the NWT fire marshal could go into those homes in those communities and shut it down because it's no longer meeting code. So through the help of the Cabinet, we were able to get some money to do inspections. And I suggested that we work together and put forward a proposal to the Government of Canada to find money so that we could address those homeownership units' repairs because a lot of those homes are beyond economic repair and we have mold issues, etcetera. So those are the solutions that I'm talking about. We need to work together instead of putting up barriers so that it makes it harder for us to help our people. And I said this in committee as well, often that government policies are overriding our constitutional protected treaty rights because Government of Canada funds this government too as well for the Indigenous, Metis, and Inuits. That Mace talks about being the Crown.

So, Mr. Speaker, I just want to say thank you to all my colleagues. I know we had a long session. And it's not often I see my friend over there, Member from Range Lake -- Frame Lake, the other day didn't say much because he was tired. A lot of people don't know this but all our colleagues here, they work really hard behind the scenes along with Cabinet. Sometimes I come across being too hard, but at the end of the day is that I want to look for solutions, and I'm encouraging everybody to work together.

Some people say that you're almost like an elder, and I listen to the elders in my communities. I was -- been at a lot of meetings where the elders tell us what to say and -- but at the end of the day, we got to respect each other. So to me, Mr. Speaker, I'm just here for the people of my riding, speaking for them because the issues that we have are real. We got to look for solutions instead of putting up barriers. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.