Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank some of the Members in the House that will not be seeking re-election, that being David Krutko from our side of the House. It was good to work with David. He’s got lots of experience, as we all know; 16 years. I enjoyed a lot of good advice from David throughout my four years as MLA for Tu Nedhe.
I’d also like to thank Premier Roland for his work for the people of the Northwest Territories.
I’d also like to thank you, Mr. Speaker, for doing such a good job, in the four years I’ve been here, running this House.
I’d also like to officially announce that I am seeking re-election in Tu Nedhe and talk about some of the issues that I’ve worked on over the last four years.
We had a lot of housing issues. We addressed a lot of housing issues. I thought the government did a good job of addressing some of the issues and heading towards addressing some of the issues. They were sometimes a little bit slow in getting to the issues, but I recognize that sometimes things do take some time.
I found that there was a lot of work done in education by the government. I thought that it was a good move in Tu Nedhe for us to bring the career and technical services back into the schools so that the kids have the opportunity to work with their hands and things like that. In the past they used to have what was referred to as industrial arts classes, but those classes were shut down over a decade and a half ago in some cases. The students never did have those items to work with and now there’s new machinery and so on being purchased in Lutselk’e, and also there’s already in place a shop in Fort Resolution doing work on some of the preschool and daycare for support for the students as they move out of elementary school into higher grades.
I thought in this Assembly the youth had received a tremendous amount of support. I know that in Fort Resolution they’re about to open a brand new youth centre, and in Lutselk’e we are still working on coming up with some sort of youth centre.
I thought there were a lot of improvements to the government infrastructure, highways, municipal infrastructures and so on. I felt that the work done by the Committee on the Sustainability in Rural and Remote Communities was very important for the small communities. We’ve seen the Access Road Program which was usually sitting at approximately $300,000 go to around $1 million and that was something that came as a result of that committee that was responsible for the sustainability of rural and remote communities. I thought there was a lot of work done for the youth through that committee, where an additional almost million dollars, $850,000 was put in towards supporting youth ambassadors and youth sports and so on.
The trapping programs through ITI that were doubled and went from about $500,000 to something in excess of a million dollars and I thought that was very good, the single-window thing. That’s something that all of the small communities should eventually be getting something through the single-window service. They’re testing it in a few of the communities, and I think that could be the future of the government, and the next Assembly, and the Assemblies after that. I think the people that filled those positions played a very important role.
I thought that the government was doing some work to try to improve the employment rates in the small communities. Right now the employment rates in the small communities are very low. They’re usually running in the 30 to 40 percent right across the territory. When you compare that to the larger communities, the larger communities have employment rates that are around 80 percent, 70 to 80 percent. That’s good. It’s a positive thing for larger communities, but more jobs have to go into the smaller communities, and I think that’s something that future governments should be working on and something that’s very important. There are a lot of key positions that could easily be in there once the housing issue is sorted out and so on.
With that, I just thought I’d make those comments to the opening address. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
