Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As Members we are often busy lobbying for more programs and services and certainly more facilities for our constituents and ridings. As we all have become well aware that our job, number one, is to make sure that our constituents’ issues are brought forward, and our roles as MLAs make this very important as we try to demonstrate the needs in our ridings.
Every community, I believe, needs to be treated fairly. Therefore, I want to use my Member’s statement today to talk about the importance of community and regional standards. By that I mean standards that provide direction regarding decisions that make certain facility levels and service levels provided in any community and certainly regions. For instance, the NWT school capital standards and criteria offers direction that when a new school needs to be built in a community, it provides standards that help people understand and certainly follow the transparency of what that means. If there’s a school that needs to be built, whether the school is unsafe or a community is larger than 100 people, that tells everyone there needs to be a school. We also know that the challenge of providing renovations to a school is usually balanced by the cost of repairs versus the new school, and certainly the future demands of that school as perhaps a learning facility needs to definitely be taken into consideration. There are many considerations, as I’m trying to stress, but the fact is we need a formula that helps improve the way our services are provided to our communities.
Mr. Speaker, I could go on about could we provide every service to every community or region, but we all know that’s certainly impossible. But we always have to ask ourselves is it cheaper to offer them in a regional centre or is it more reasonable to offer them in a regional centre than it is to always pull them into Yellowknife, and vice versa. Sometimes it’s just more reasonable to bring them here.
So, Mr. Speaker, there are a lot of standards we need to weigh and balance: the human standard, what it does to the family, and certainly the cost standard, what it does to our books. Mr. Speaker, I’m calling for a provision that the government will demonstrate fairness and clarity of services to the people of the Northwest Territories and have a policy that makes sure that these factors are always clearly considered. I’d like the government to demonstrate this in a transparent and measurable way so all standards are understood so every region understands that maybe the next community centre, next pool, next arena or health centre, when it comes around, it could be their turn and certainly when they deserve it. It won’t take the politics out of the system, Mr. Speaker, but it will certainly maybe even help the fight that many Members here fight for when they demand services to be provided in the communities. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The honourable Member for Hay River South, Mrs. Groenewegen.
