Katrina Nokleby

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, earlier in this session I rose to acknowledge my page, and I realized I did not use their preferred name. So I would like to recognize my page Andy Sieben who is here from Great Slave, and all of the pages who have done a wonderful job. Thank you.

I'll keep it short. I just wanted to say that we have seen examples of these types of programs working, the women's society doing the Spruce Bough program, the YWCA. I'm so excited for their family centre to finally be open again, which will then replicate some of what was lost during the Rockhill fire, which really the model we want to see, is that people don't need to travel to get services; they can help each other out; there's supports and education pieces right in the building that they're living in. It's just wonderful, the things that they can do. And so I think, again, the...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Like the previous motion, this one is very important, and it does need to be addressed in that this is a marginalized group of people that are not always even going to be able to access or feel comfortable accessing traditional supports that might be in place. You know, I have heard as well from people that were renting places or were about to sign leases and things and then made the sort of innocuous comment of, as woman, my wife will be coming, and then finding out all of a sudden they no longer have that lease and that there really is still a degree of prejudice...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I agree with what my colleague has said. And for me coming back to the young man and the youth I was speaking about before, you know, in trying to help him access funding for tournaments and such, often some of these things just don't fit into either what the Indigenous organization that he belongs to, what they need to have happen, whatever the government will provide for. And where I see sort of an example of this is if it's a tournament or one where it's not like an invite or a team that's going from the territory and the youth wants to go by themselves because...

Thank you, Madam Chair. First, I want to thank the young man that I have had the pleasure to get to know over the last while who has really driven this situation and issue home for me. And honestly, I don't think I would have had the fortitude at the age of 16 to go out and advocate for myself the way that this young man has. And when I look at the absolute lack of response to his situation, again, I come back to the word shameful. You know, my response to the inquiries I got about him was that he could go to the youth shelter my colleague mentioned, or he could find himself a place to...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I mean, we've heard time and time again from this Minister and department why we can't have anything here in the territory and it just isn't going to work. Well, when I look at youth who can hardly even sometimes have the ability to move on out of the territory to go to school, who are children that are moving to a positive situation, I don't even understand how we remotely think we should be sending our children away when they are in their most vulnerable position. We pay more attention to the kids going away on SFA and give them more supports than we do with our...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, why this motion is important, not only just for the obvious reasons that it's great and we need to have our youth gathering and allow them to have these opportunities, but the reason that we specifically need to highlight this is that a lot of the funding that is provided in the suicide prevention or for youth is limited in the amount of funding that each project or event could apply for. And I believe that's a $45,000 cap. But when we look at some of the recent events that were put on by youth in the territory, some of those were up into the lines of...

Thank you, Madam Chair. And to follow up further on what my colleague said I also do want to thank the coroner for raising this alarm. However, it speaks volumes to me that it took getting this report out early for the government to pay any attention to the fact that we were in a mental health crisis and continue to be so and had been for quite a while I think before the end of 2022.

We wrote to the Minister, we had made people aware, we raised the issue at early as 2020 that there were increasing numbers of people that were having suicidal ideation, that people who had not previously shown...

Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair. I you know, I have to say I found this one to be a shock when I realized that someone who is homeless has to be considered to be somewhere in order to qualify for a house. And the funny part about that was or funny, I shouldn't say funny. It's but if I don't laugh, I'll cry was that at times while I was, you know, advocating for someone in this position, I got a response from the department that was well, they left town. We heard they were in Yellowknife. And therefore, you know, their position on the list whatever. And I was, like, but they don't have...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, this is, we feel on the committee, a really important change that needs to be made. Given the small nature of our sorry, the nature of our small towns, I think that it's really quite disingenuous to think that conversation is not going to happen around any sort of complaint or issue that is brought forward. And what not having the ability to speak about the complainant does to the day care provider or the day home provider is that it doesn't it hampers them from being allowed to go and get advice from their peer group. It doesn't allow them to properly be...