Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As you can tell, we are going on a theme here. We are talking about the high cost of living in the Northwest Territories. For anybody that doesn’t see it, it would be a good opportunity to go into the communities and see how hard our people have to struggle in the smaller communities.
This is something that affects us all. We talk about the high cost of food, but it does affect our communities, where we’re actually putting people into poverty throughout the Northwest Territories.
We had a good discussion today on mental health and addictions and how people who go into poverty get stressed out, they get depressed, they get a sense of hopelessness; hopelessness within the system, within our government, within our community and with our community leaders and territorial leaders. We need to take action where we can help our people out and get a comfortable type of living just so they can live.
The cost of living is so high in the Northwest Territories that the Minister of Housing and the department of Housing put in a Rent Supplement Program, and I applaud him for that to help the working poor, the people who do have jobs and live in good living conditions, but they have a hard time making it in their communities. So I applaud the Minister and his department for that, for helping us and assisting us that way. However, with the increase in our electricity and our energy bills and the money taken away from our energy initiatives, we’re putting more money away in this government. That’s affecting our people. I always talk about if we invest now, we don’t have to pay later and our people will have a better, healthier lifestyle.
The Minister of Human Resources mentioned today he has to modernize the Recruitment Strategy, which is great because he needs to find innovative ways because we’re having a hard time getting professionals in the North within certain jobs because of the high cost of living. It’s hard to get people who want to come up here and try to make a living when all of their money is going to pay bills, pay for groceries, pay fuel costs, market rent or the high cost of living with the houses. It’s a reality. We see it here in Yellowknife, we see it in Inuvik, we see it in the smaller communities.
It’s time that we help our small communities and start making some really good decisions in here that will help our people in the Northwest Territories.
Your time for Member’s statement… Okay. Thank you, Mr. Moses. The Member for Hay River North, Mr. Bouchard.
