Thank you, Mr. Speaker. On Friday I had the opportunity to attend a ceremony here at the Legislative Assembly, which was near and dear to my heart, and that was the World No Tobacco Day on May 31st of every year. It was really nice to see, although I missed part of the ceremony. It was nice to see that the Department of Health and Social Services and its partners were promoting not only talking about the commercial uses of tobacco but promoting the cultural and traditional uses of tobacco that we have in the Northwest Territories, and promoting spirituality, healing, respect, offering prayers, but also talking about the commercial use and what that causes: the cancers, the strokes, heart disease and even death.
The ceremony finished with the feeding of the fire, and everyone that was in attendance participated and they all got to say a few words. But some of the strongest words were from our elders. Actually, the Stanton Territorial Health Authority Elders’ Council was there, a very strong voice. They didn’t have to read from a paper to tell us what they knew and how they grew up, and a lot of it wasn’t in terms of commercial tobacco use. They talked about the traditional uses. Very powerful words, very strong words, very wise words, and those words were that we’ve got to start focusing on prevention and promotion and educating our people to live healthier lifestyles.
I was very happy to hear that, and although we still do have a very high prevalence rate of smoking in the Northwest Territories – I think second across Canada – the numbers have been dropping. What has been increasing is the amount of people that don’t start smoking and that’s what this government needs to promote, educate and continue to strive for. In fact, it will lead us into that new generation of healthy, educated adults with the youth coming up and educating our youth.
Actually, in terms of education awareness, this morning in one of our public sessions, we heard from Mr. Wise Old Yakeleya here. He made a comment. He did say give a man a fish, feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime. This government has got to start educating and teaching our residents to live a healthier lifestyle so that we can create lifelong healthy, educated people and residents of the Northwest Territories.
I thank our wise colleague here, Mr. Yakeleya, for those words.
Thank you, Mr. Moses. The Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.
