Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today my statement is on members of my constituency who are either full-time or part-time harvesters.
Many of our people in the Northwest Territories have cabins on the land where they go to harvest food for their families or where they take their children to teach traditional survival skills. Culture is high on my list of priorities, Mr. Speaker, and it gives me great pride when I see families who spend time on the land, who take time to share their cultural values with their children and who, at the same time, are surviving off the land.
Many people in the Mackenzie Delta in my communities of Tsiigehtchic, Aklavik and Fort McPherson, still live on the land. They go for the spring, summer, fall and winter. Each season brings an abundance of wildlife, trapping, fishing, harvesting, and the list goes on.
When you are in the bush or on the land, it gives you a renewed strength and energy and makes you proud of what you are doing. I want to remind the Members that in the spring of 2013 there was a flood in the Mackenzie Delta. During this flood, cabins were damaged by water. Some cabins were ruined by the ice jamming and the majority of these cabins are unlivable.
Disaster compensation forms were filled out and these people who had their cabins ruined have been denied any kind of compensation. Like I’ve said, all these people take time to go out on the land to spend time with their families, to teach children to eat our healthy, traditional foods. Our policy needs to be revisited in order for cabin owners to have some sort of funding coming to them so that they can rebuild their cabins, take their children back to the land and to continue teaching and sharing what we were taught.
It’s been over a year and our constituents continue to wait for answers regarding these flood claims. When will the department give us answers? I would also like to know when they last visited their policy and revised it. How soon can the department take another look and reconsider these claims? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Blake. The honourable Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.
