Thank you. To the motion. Member for Nunakput.
Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair. No, I just want to urge our government, you know, I we do need support for our youth and our communities, and I've been standing on this side of the House and being able to try to get out for youth sport and stuff like that, different aspects for our youth to get out of our small communities. We need to help them. They're really after, like I said since COVID, this last two years out of COVID, we've been our youth are really struggling. I see it every day, because I live it in a small community. And I really the supports that we give, it's not enough. But and it's too much stress on our local community governments because they're having to take a lot of the weight. But I really urge our government to try to work with this side of the House to make a plan on a go forward for suicide prevention, a meaningful participation on both sides to make something be able to work for all of us and something to be proud of to support our youth in our small communities, which we need to do. Thank you, Madam Chair.
To the motion.
Question.
Question has been called. All those in favour? All those opposed? All those abstaining? The motion is carried.
Carried
Member for Kam Lake.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, I move that this committee recommends that the Department of Health and Social Services expedite and streamline the application, approval, and reporting requirements for the community suicide prevention fund. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you. The motion is in order. To the motion.
Question.
Question has been called. All those in favour? All those opposed? Abstentions? The motion is carried.
Carried
Member for Kam Lake.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, I move that this committee recommends that the Department of Health and Social Services expand the eligibility for projects under the community suicide prevention fund to include sports, arts and recreational programming; culture, language and on the land programming; and informal elder/respected community memberyouth mentorships. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you. The motion is in order. To the motion. Member for Great Slave.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, one of the things that we heard repeatedly as a committee, both in this work and as well if anything around addictions and such, is that the youth that have nothing to do with they're bored, that's when they're getting into trouble and that's when they're finding themselves, you know, too wrapped up in their heads and what they're thinking and their emotions, and they need creative outlets and places to go that are safe spaces that are free from the harmful influences of perhaps alcohol and drugs and the trauma that they have dealt with. And we've often talked a lot about sport here, but things like beading and traditional workshops and drumming as well even just spending time with elders. It's something that will occupy youth and will give them a sense of accomplishment and pride in themselves and what they're doing. And I think that goes a long way in preventing youth anybody from going down these mental health challenges. So I can't stress this one enough. Again, it comes down to flexibility like our last the previous motion that we didn't speak to. But, you know, is that even the perception of hoops to jump through is at times the barrier to actually anyone applying. So however the government can go about in getting this to be the easiest and most possible sort of informal way to get money into the hands and even if that's just a youth who says, I want to put on a potluck and I need, you know, $400 for some supplies. Like, I want us to see those types of programs and anything, really, that youth come up with, I want to see us fund them. I mean, they know what they want and what they need, and we don't need to be telling them that. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you. To the motion.
Question.
Question has been called. All those in favour? All those opposed? Abstentions? The motion is carried.
Carried
Member for Kam Lake.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, I move that this committee recommends that the Department of Health and Social Services increase the Community Suicide Prevention Fund to $1 million annually.
The motion is in order. To the motion.
Question.
Question has been called. All those in favour? All those opposed? Abstentions? The motion is carried.
Carried
Member for Kam Lake.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, I move that this committee recommends that Housing Northwest Territories develop a supportive community housing strategy focused on youth and youth aging out of care. Thank you, Madam Chair.
The motion is in order. To the motion. Member for Kam Lake.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, this is a very important one. We heard from multiple youth who were involved in or are involved in the child and family services system in care, or children who are not currently in care but that have been involved with the child and family services system and are choosing to use shelters to access safe housing. There is currently no available onebedrooms or bachelortype living or living options available in most of our communities in the Northwest Territories. And so when youth, or youth who age out of care, are looking for a place to live, a safe place to live, there aren't options out there. So youth often end up being in either visible or invisible homelessness situations.
We in Yellowknife here are privileged enough to have the North's only youth shelter. And this shelter cannot serve all of the youth in Yellowknife that currently need a housing solution. And so a lot of our youth end up putting themselves into unsafe living situations either well, I don't need to go into details here, Madam Chair. They end up putting themselves into unsafe situations. These unsafe situations often end up drastically reducing their quality of life, drastically having an impact on their hope, and also have an impact on their ability to access education, employment, and overall health. And so we need a housing strategy that specifically focuses on how we're going to support our youth so that we are not creating cycles of homelessness right off the bat. Thank you.
Thank you. To the motion. Member for Great Slave.
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 live.
So basically this 16yearold, the impetus or the onus was on him to have to go and hit up all of his friends' parents to see if any one of them would take him in. And currently now he's in somewhat more of like a boarding home type situation renting a room. But that was all on himself to do that, and luckily for him there was a family that decided that they wanted to help advocate for him and then ended up finding him a place. But, again, very less than ideal. He still has to do all of his own planning and advocacy for himself. He has to daily liaise with his social worker to get things like internet so that he can, you know, do his schoolwork. He's an athlete. He has to do all of his own fundraising in trying to find his way to tournaments, you know, and he has a promising future there. And, really, it's been mind boggling to me the hurdles that, even myself as an adult trying to help him, I've been not able to really do anything. And it's very dismissive when the government comes back and washes their hands of things that are affecting our youth. Sometimes I can accept that when I'm coming to them and I'm saying I want to talk about this road, or I want to talk about this power plant. When we're talking about our youth and our children and that's the response that we get from this government, I have to say, Madam Chair, I'm not sure how sometimes people sleep at night. You know, I don't know that this is happening and that young women are having to choose to go on Tinder to find places to stay because the shelter is full. That's what my colleague didn't want to allude to but that's what's happening. And I look at myself, and I think back to myself at the age of 16 and how naive and stupid I was, and we're putting it on them to find the solutions. It's it is, it's shameful. And I really hope that the people listening are actually going to take this what we're saying here and do something with it because I don't actually see anybody in the room listening to it from that department. So therefore hopefully the people that are behind the scenes listening to it are actually listening to us. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you. To the motion.
Question.
Question has been called. All those in favour? All those opposed? Abstentions? The motion is carried.
Carried
Member for Kam Lake.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, I move that this committee recommends that the Department of Education, Culture and Employment review and amend the career and education advisor job description to recruit Indigenous persons in these positions. Thank you, Madam Chair.
The motion is in order. To the motion.
Question.
Question has been called. All those in favour? All those opposed? Abstentions? The motion is carried.
Carried
Member for Kam Lake.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, I move that this committee recommends that Education, Culture and Employment make the guidelines for ensuring LGBTQ+ equity, safety, and inclusion in the Northwest Territories schools training mandatory in Northwest Territories schools. Thank you, Madam Chair.
The motion is in order. To the motion. Member for Great Slave.
Thank you, Madam Chair. And I do apologize that I seem to be speaking a lot but this is a topic that just really touches my heart and honestly one I feel that we can't give enough attention to.
When I look at what is going on for LGBTQ youth and apologize for not using the longer acronym, but I don't have it in front of me that, you know, not only are many of them facing issues around their own orientation and sexuality but often times if they're Indigenous, they are also facing racism. And this is creating an even more of a marginalized and vulnerable group.
You know, I was very hardened when I first came to Yellowknife. For such a small town in the far north, I had an expectation that it would be a lot less tolerant. And I did find that I was surprised 15, 16 years ago to see the vibrant community here. However, since then I have realized that that is a lot mainly centered and focused here in Yellowknife. And as such, I'm not sure that that advocacy and that support exists for our youth who are of a nonbinary or non and sorry, I'm trying to be respectful in my in how I phrase things, but, again, I'm very tired. So I think that if we don't make specific policies and have specific conversations and discussion around people that are experiencing this violence or whatever, discrimination as a result of their orientation, it won't get talked about. We can talk about a lot of other areas. We talk about race a lot, things like that. But this is an area that's still not given the attention that is needed. And until we are in a place where it is mainstreamed to all of our work, it does need to have its own specific attention paid to it. And really, this will save the lives of our youth. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you. To the motion. Member for Kam Lake.
Yeah, thank you very much, Madam Chair. And for anybody listening, I just wanted to acknowledge that while our report in full does use the 2SLGBTQ IPA plus acronym, that it isn't used here in this motion because the motion refers to a specific course name. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you. To the motion.
Question.
Question has been called. All those in favour? All those opposed? Abstentions? The motion is carried.
Carried
Member for Kam Lake.
Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, I move that this committee recommends that Municipal and Community Affairs increase funding for the youth centres initiative to a maximum of $100,000 for each recipient to ensure that youth have positive and safe spaces to be free of alcohol, drugs and violence. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you. The motion is in order. To the motion.
Question.
Question has been called. All those in favour? All those opposed? Sorry, abstentions? The motion is carried.
Carried
Member for Kam Lake.
