Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Imagine going to the store and paying $8 for two kilograms of sugar or paying $4 for a litre of milk. Imagine not being able to cash a government cheque or if you do cash it, only getting half the cash and getting an IOU for the balance or even less; maybe getting $200 or $300 cash and the rest goes onto your account.
If you are living in the Sahtu community of Fort Good Hope, you wouldn’t have to imagine this, Mr. Speaker. You would be living it in colour or in black and white. In most of our small communities there are limited options for grocery shopping and cashing cheques, making it harder still the fact that perhaps eight months of the year there is no winter road. So we have no option but to shop locally and then in Fort Good Hope one of the two stores in town burned down and the option was even more limited. Everything is flown into the one store. Boy, oh, boy, you sure have to pay.
Mr. Speaker, in Fort Good Hope, people are paying $8.99 for a 2.5 kilogram bag of flour, $7.49 for 72 tea bags. Recent figures on the average weekly cost for a family food basket shows the cost in the Sahtu being almost twice as high as in Yellowknife.
Mr. Speaker, the people of Fort Good Hope need our help. At the co-op, the people own the building and the business. By gosh, it sure doesn’t seem a darn thing to them. They are getting gouged from this government through its fuel supplier or transportation company when it gets in trouble, by not getting enough gas for the community or subsidize the cost. I think we have to subsidize the cost of food in Fort Good Hope. I know fuel for cars and trucks and for houses is important, but, by golly, fuel for our children’s bellies has to be seen to be even more important. People hope that the winter road prices at the co-op would come down but that hasn’t happened. I think we need to declare a state of emergency or something, because if we don’t have a good job in Fort Good Hope, there are not too many good high paying jobs there. You cannot feed yourself or your family. You continue to go and get...
Mr. Speaker, what the co-op is doing, the cashing of cheques, sure seems wrong to me, giving an IOU or forcing to pay three-quarters of your cheque onto your account. Isn’t that extortion, Mr. Speaker? This is where the government can, and must, stand up for the people. It is time we got to sort this out. It is time we protect our people first and foremost. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The honourable Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.
