Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I heard a quote from somebody that said, “never tear down anything unless you’re prepared to build something better in its place.” The last couple of days I had the pleasure of meeting with the Tulita leaders, and I want to thank Premier McLeod and the Ministers for making themselves available to sit down with the Tulita leadership to talk about some of the issues they are dealing with today.
What I got from the Tulita leadership meeting with the Ministers and the Premier is that we must keep moving forward no matter what happens. We can either sit idle or we can move to live, and they chose to move forward to make a life for themselves.
I also heard it is far more difficult to be a builder of people and create opportunities, jobs and businesses and anything in this life here. What I got from the leadership meeting is we’re in control. In 1994, the land claims, there were provisions in our own land claims to ensure that we have control. That has not happened in the past. By gaining control in the land claims, we have access and benefits which allows direct involvement that sets the terms and conditions for coming and working on our land. We have land use plans. This involves communities and elders. I know my mom was involved in that, that we’re participating, which lands were set aside for development, what lands where it says no development. We have harvesting areas, spiritual areas, cultural areas. We even announced Naats’ihch’oh Park as our area.
We have a young population. There are 45 potential graduates this year, 59 next year and 51 the following year. What will we do for them? What are we going to set in place for them? We have Aurora College graduates.
I seek unanimous consent to conclude my Member’s statement.
---Unanimous consent granted
There are 10 Aurora Collage graduates this year. What are the training opportunities? We’re looking for a Sahtu technical institution. We have 295 people in the Sahtu today who are capable of working, plus more that need to get to work. We had income assistance decrease a million dollars when there was work going on in the Sahtu region.
The point I want to conclude is our people want wellness. They want to have wellness of our people, on-the-land programs, a transition home for people, and they want to get our people to work. The message is that we want to work. What I want to say in closing from the leaders, is that it’s better to be a builder than a destroyer.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The Member for Deh Cho, Mr. Nadli.
