Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. I want to follow up on some really distressing reports we’ve heard on CBC over the last couple of days about food not being on the table of our people across the North, and the failure of our food banks. Our people are, obviously, suffering here. If they didn’t have country food they would be starving. I would like to ask – recognizing that there are ripple effects through our families, education, health, so on – first of all, what is the situation from the Minister’s understanding? To what degree does this exist in the Northwest Territories?
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Lafferty.
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. What I can offer is the programs that we currently deliver into the communities, whether it be to the organizations. Part of the programs that we offer, of course, is income security. Within income security there are all different programs, as well, whether it be Productive Choices, individuals that can access the income security. We also offer other areas such as, again, through my department, the Labour Market Agreement. I know the Member is referring to specifically the food area, but we work closely with the Health and Social Services department, and also the Minister responsible for Homelessness on the actual funding that’s available. It is a joint task force that we try to deal with those matters.
We’ve heard over the radio, as well, on CBC. We are fully aware of it and we are dealing with that at the community-based level.
Thanks to the Minister for those remarks. Unfortunately, this Assembly is becoming known as one that studies problems rather than deals with them. I really hope that the Minister will take the lead in working with his colleagues in addressing the situation and committing… First of all, will he commit to finding out the extent of the problem and why our food banks are failing, and people do not have food on their table despite all the programs mentioned.
As I indicated, there are approximately three departments working on this particular project and we are aware of it. To the extent of the challenges, we need to work together in collaboration and identify solutions, because that’s where we’ve been focusing on as a department, and we will be informing the Members as we move forward on resolving this issue. That’s our prime mandate. As my Department of Education, Culture and Employment, we’ll do what we can with the programs in existence to offer a remedy to these situations.
Thanks for the remarks from the Minister. Again, we want to see action here and less studying. Surely, we must know something about why this is happening. Is it bad decisions? Are some people making bad decisions? If so, what are we doing about correcting those decisions? You know, bad decisions, I’m going to gamble this week with my income support and then starve later. That’s a bad decision. What are we doing to help people make better decisions, if that’s the case?
Again, we are providing the programming through ECE to the communities, to the organizations to deal with those challenges that we’re faced with. Again, interdepartmental, that we are working towards a solution towards this and we’ll continue to stress that. It is important to us and it’s one of our priorities. We will be reaching out to the communities that are most impacted.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thanks to the Minister for that commitment. We’ve refused programs to help feed our children in schools. We’ve refused milk subsidies and so on. We really need to get going. This is serious and has direct impacts on our children and our people. People are hungry. What will the Minister do in the short term? People are starving right now, or at least undernourished and so on, according to the reports. What will he do right away?
What I can do as Minister responsible is, again, work with the two Ministers, but at the same time, with our programming, as we speak, my department is doing the research within those communities that are impacted, the challenges that we’re faced with and what can we provide. If we need to improve in those areas, we’ll continue to do so in our programming. This is what I can provide to the Members, that my income department area will be going to those communities from a regional perspective and provide solutions to the challenges.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. The Member for Inuvik Boot Lake, Mr. Moses.
