Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I also stand here in the House and use my Member’s statement to talk about the NGO Stabilization Fund.
In my work in doing a lot of volunteering, working on committees, past government work, working in actually offering some of these programs through some of the departments that I have worked for, we have a lot of really great NGOs out in the Territories who are doing excellent work. Coming into the government, I see the process of how long it takes to get a budget passed to support some of these organizations that we put policies in place that prevent them from actually accessing some of the dollars that are in there.
For instance, our youth centres are great organizations doing a lot of great work. Our MACA department does offer half a million dollars for these organizations to do their work, but that is not enough. This past year I think they averaged out somewhere in the amount of $14,700. Then if you go back a couple of weeks in the news report, a lot of the Aboriginal kids that have been in foster care are due to neglect.
A lot of times these kids are the ones that access the programs at the youth centres and friendship centres. These youth centres burn out their staff and they also don’t have enough dollars to run specific programs.
Looking at the website earlier, it talks about how this NGO Stabilization Fund supports NGOs that deliver critical GNWT-funded programs critical to NWT residents. It also talks about how it recognizes that a lot of these NGOs provide essential services that follow under GNWT policy objectives. Those should say that we have to support them even more, or fight for dollars to get the programs up in place.
You have a lot of organizations doing a lot of great work right now and we really need to support them by upping the NGO Stabilization Fund, making it a little easier for these non-government organizations to access funding so that they can provide these critical services, essential services that are needed in the Northwest Territories. All we have to do is look at the reports, discussions that we have with governments and all these indicators that should be red flagged that need to be adjusted.
With that said, Mr. Speaker, I will have some questions later for the Minister of Health and Social Services on some of those prevention and promotion dollars that we did fight for during the last budget session. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Moses. Member for Nahendeh, Mr. Menicoche.
