Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d certainly love to join Mrs. Groenewegen’s support for nurses and RCMP in small communities; however, I’m going to talk about the importance of life on the land for our people in our communities, people who fish on the Great Slave Lake, people who hunt up in the Bear Lake area and on the Mackenzie River, people who hunt up in the Beaufort-Delta, people who live on the land. Yesterday I heard from Mr. Ramsay that there’s a lot of support from our community members who make a life on the land either fishing, hunting or trapping and one of the things that I wanted to speak about, that’s a way of life for people.
Now, the way of life today costs a lot of money for us to go out on the land and to provide for our people. As a matter of fact, in my community profile of the people consume on-the-land food, up to 75, 76, 80, 90 percent in Colville Lake, take food from the land. Our families are important for our hunters and trappers, and looking at the different programs we have, I don’t really see anything for trappers or hunters where they want to take their families to continue this way of life, to teach them the value of life, to teach them the values of the land and the animals and to learn out there. There’s not really a program set in place so the families can say yes, we want to take our family out, but rather they have to leave them back in the community because it costs so much to go out there and make their life out there.
At one time it wasn’t an issue because that was our way of life. Today life has changed over to somewhat of an economy-based life. Now the furs are taken for money so that they can continue on with this, so we’re at the real crux of our lifestyle in the communities. We continue on with the way of life, or we shift over now to an industrial wage economy like where that knowledge is becoming our way of life.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.
