Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There have been a few raspberries for Ministers in recent days, but today we’re talking about strawberries. Later this summer I may be able to give a few to the Ministers to put on their ice cream.
I’m happy to say that my community is on its way to becoming the strawberry capital of the Northwest Territories, as reported in the Deh Cho Drum yesterday.
Once again our young people are showing us the way. It was the Grade 7 class of Deh Gah School that decided to grow a crop of strawberries and show that it can be done. I find this is a very cool project because it builds on traditional knowledge in the community. Strawberries do grow wild on our land; we already know a lot about them.
To get back to my story, the students at Deh Gah School brought in 1,000 strawberry plants of different varieties. I would like to thank Nora Dorgan at Westech, the farm in Prince Edward Island that donated them. With great minds, students planted hundreds of them in the community garden. They also did a little fundraising by offering great deals to community members for their own gardens, complete with planting service. About 25 people took them up on their offer, so now strawberries are growing all over the place. The school has kept about 150 plants to use for cuttings to start even more. I would also like to thank teacher James Hatch for helping the young people with those projects.
There are many lessons we can learn from our students. As I mentioned a couple days ago, we can grow food in the Deh Cho region and across the South Slave area. It is an opportunity to improve the access to fresh, healthy foods. There are, no doubt, some business opportunities in agriculture as well. We should follow the example of our students that look for products that are both suited to our land and popular with people who love to eat them.
I would like more thinking like this within the departments of Environment and Natural Resources and Economic Development. Pretty soon the Ministers will take the taste tests. I’m betting our strawberries are better than California’s. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Nadli. The Member for Nahendeh, Mr. Menicoche.
