Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I want to talk about an NGO in Hay River. It is the Hay River Council for Persons with Disabilities.
I would like to take my hat off to this organization, who has been faced with many challenges and yet continues to persist in their efforts to assist the people in our community who have disabilities. They do this in spite of not very much help from this government. As a matter of fact, I would say this government discouraged their efforts.
This small group of people gets $35,000 from this government. For that, they employ a half-time person, but what they also do is they look for funds from other sources and they have leveraged up to $455,000 to do programs in the community to help Hay River people who have disabilities and they have done so much on their own initiative.
Mr. Speaker, they do employment programs, housing programs, handivan, they teach life skills. They have a little program called Rags to Riches, where you can take clothing or articles to them. They will cut them up and they will make them into things they can sell and they will turn rags into a little bit of money.
They have done everything. They have held bake sales. They’ve held garage sales. They get $35,000 from this government and a whole lot of hassle to go with it.
Mr. Speaker, I will tell you a few things that have recently been said by members of the public service. We won’t name them because that’s not the appropriate thing to do, but who have gone to meet with the Council for Persons with Disabilities in Hay River.
They sat down across the desk from these hardworking volunteers – one of them is on salary, the rest are volunteers – and have said to them, “You just have to learn to say no. You shouldn’t be doing all these things for these clients. You just need to learn to say no. You shouldn’t be doing all this. And when they still come to you with these problems, you need to refer them to other places in the community where they can go for help.” Hey! News flash! There is no other place. If there was, they wouldn’t have to be taking on this role.
This organization has had to move seven times in the last few years, going from pillar to post to try and have a roof over their head. Kindly, Minister Miltenberger came down there one time and he actually said, you know, here is some government office space, under the health authority. They did move there, but it turned out it ended up costing them more money because they had to pay for their own Internet, but they were in a government office. But these people come down from Yellowknife, where the funding goes here in spades, okay? The infrastructure here is pretty wonderful in Yellowknife. But they come down to a little organization like this in Hay River and they tell them that the space that they have, it’s gloomy. There are cracks in the floor. They’re trying to take a sow’s ear and turn it into a silk purse to have something for these people with disabilities, and they get, basically, discouraged by the people who are supposed to oversee this program who work for the government who are from Yellowknife.
I’d like to seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement.
---Unanimous consent granted
At a recent exchange between some members who represent departments who came down to Hay River to speak to these people who were saying you need to learn to say no, you need to refer these people to other places, you need to hold more fundraisers, in that same conversation they dared to mention that your Ministers have been down here and they have seen the hard work we’re doing, and they’re seeing what we’re doing and they’re supporting it. The response they got – and I want to put this on the public record, and this is referring to Mr. Lafferty and referring to Mr. Beaulieu – your Ministers have big hearts. They say things like that, but they don’t control the budget of the departments that we work for. I want that on the public record, and we had better start showing some respect for these people in communities who are now looking at helping Fort Providence, Fort Resolution and Fort Simpson get programs going for people with disabilities. This is not coming from a government department. This is from volunteers in Hay River, and I want them to get some support and some respect.
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The Member for Deh Cho, Mr. Nadli.
