Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. My statement today is about Fort Liard, which sorely needs a full-time school counsellor. The community currently receives only monthly drop-in service from a regional school counsellor. With a population exceeding 500 people, Fort Liard is large enough to warrant an RCMP detachment, nursing and basic health infrastructure, a social service office, a fire hall and schools from K-12, yet today it has no full-time school counsellor.
Fort Liard has more than its share of social problems. We can get a glimpse from the Frontier Foundation, an Aboriginal non-profit organization whose mission it is to support socially disadvantaged communities. They recently were in Fort Liard, and during a brainstorming session with Fort Liard teenagers, the Frontier Foundation volunteers recorded a staggering litany of social problems. The list included stealing, drinking, smoking, drugs, bullying, drug dealing, bootlegging, break and entering, drinking and driving, violence, violent crime and parents abusing kids.
You may counter by saying these are subjective descriptions, but plenty of cold hard facts can make these descriptions plausible. Consider these numbers. The violent crime rate in Fort Liard is double the territorial rate. The hamlet’s employment rate is 10 percent lower than the territorial rate. Average family income in Fort Liard is approximately 65 percent of the territorial average. Forty-seven percent of Liard’s households are core need, a figure well above the NWT rate. This means that nearly half of the hamlet’s households meet a low-income threshold and occupy a dwelling that fails in the areas of sustainability, adequacy and affordability, and there is indeed a lot of overcrowding there.
Last, but not least, territory-wide graduation rates hover about 50 percent, far below the national rate, but graduation rates in small communities are closer to 40 percent. Now we add to this GNWT Early Development Instrument report in 2014 that shows 50 percent of our children in the small communities are significantly behind in their development and this probably has been this way for many years.
I seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement.
---Unanimous consent granted
To be sure, Fort Liard youth are up against an awful lot. How can we expect them to thrive without consistent, dedicated support from a school counsellor? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. The Member for Mackenzie Delta, Mr. Blake.
