Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, gone are the days of the government bringing professionals into our smaller communities, putting them in housing units, pay for their living and working in the North by flying them out on vacation trips and rewarding them for long-time service by keeping them in the communities for a number of years. Mr. Speaker, in Tulita and Sahtu, housing is a crisis for our communities. Schools are losing about 50 percent or more teachers every year. Mr. Speaker, to be a veteran teacher in the school in the Sahtu or the Northwest Territories, all you have to do is stay up to about three years. You see, Mr. Speaker, finding new teachers is not the problem, it’s the lack of consistency with teachers who don’t know where they will be next or where they will be living next year. It’s been said, Mr. Speaker, that trust building, bonding and respect are the building blocks of any type of educational environment and this is not happening in the Sahtu or in the Tulita school.

Mr. Speaker, for example we have three teachers presently living in our local hotel in Tulita. It’s good for our economy for the hotel yet, Mr. Speaker, we have teachers who have no place to live and we expect them to provide quality education classes for our children.

Mr. Speaker, this is unacceptable for people in the Sahtu and Tulita. Mr. Speaker, some of our teachers are sharing houses, the cost of living is very high in the Sahtu, and another thing is the high cost of taxes. For example, Mr. Speaker, in Nunavut, the Nunavut government has gone to bat and they have subsidized the teachers' housing in that jurisdiction. When will this government stand up and admit that maybe it was a mistake to get out of the housing business and stop this process in the Sahtu? Give our students, our people, the best educational opportunity of their lives, by supporting people who, at ground level, have some level of comfort for teaching. Thank you.

---Applause

Speaker: MR. SPEAKER

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Item 3, Members’ statements. I would like to commend the Members on their obedience to the rules regarding Members’ statements today.

---Laughter