Thank you, Mr. Speaker. June 10th to the 16th is recognized as Senior Citizens Week in the Northwest Territories. Senior Citizens Week provides an excellent opportunity for people of all ages to celebrate with our seniors their lives, their accomplishments, wisdom and knowledge. It can be an exciting time to get the family and community together to be active with our elders and our older adults, such as taking them out for a tea or just going and doing a regular house visit and appreciating them for who they are.
During this week let’s take the extra time and care in honouring our senior citizens. The prosperity we continue to enjoy today has been made possible by the seniors and elders of our community. It is during this week that we ask communities across the NWT to join us in celebrating, as well, Elders Abuse Awareness Day, which is June 15th. We must honour our elders as they are the teachers of our knowledge, keepers of our culture and traditions. They are also the caregivers that allowed us to be who we are today, sitting in this House with respect and values.
We must respect the hard work and commitment they have made in shaping our communities and this territory. With that said, we must work collaboratively to ensure issues that are of concern to seniors are addressed and we do it as a group. The seniors have a saying of seniors helping seniors, but I will want to take it a little bit further and say communities helping seniors, government helping seniors.
Just before I came into the House today, I had a phone call from a couple of elders in one of the surrounding communities back home and they were pretty upset with what had happened last week with regard to a Minister’s statement made last week ensuring that seniors will be paying rent on September 1st. Hopefully, that does not go through. We are still wanting to create some more discussion on that.
In the small communities there’s a high cost of living, lack of jobs and there are seniors who take care of their families who are adults. Because of that, they’re going to have to pay. They take care of the adults in their families and we’re still trying to squeeze every little bit of dollars out of them. Thirty-five dollars doesn’t seem like a lot, but in a small community it might be enough for a couple of meals for one day. I respect our elders, all the traditions and cultures that they have, and that concern needs to be addressed.
Thank you, Mr. Moses. The honourable Member for Nahendeh, Mr. Menicoche.
