Date
June
1
2006
Members Present
ITEM 1: PRAYER
Assembly Members
Debates of June 1, 2006 (day 3)
Topics
Statements
Member’s Statement On Burdensome Funding Process For Non-Government Social Services Agencies
Michael McLeod
Deh Cho
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, this government is always speaking to the social well-being of the residents of the Northwest Territories. In fact, Mr. Handley in his statement spoke to the fact that they’re going to have a summit on aboriginal women’s issues and, in particular, violence against women, and they said they consider it an important initiative.
That’s my topic today, why we allow the people that provide these services to continually have to wait for their funding from the regional health boards. They have enough to do, Mr. Speaker, without constantly having to worry about funding. They have payrolls to make and we wonder why we don’t have many people volunteering to provide these services and to try and run them. To quote from a piece of correspondence I received, it said, it’s very disheartening for a volunteer board to have to spend hours of our volunteer time negotiating with the Department of Health and Social Services. She ended with saying, we are so very tired, and it’s something they have to do every year.
This is something I spoke to last year in regards to the women’s shelter in Inuvik. It’s June the 1st today and they still haven’t received their funding. We went through the same thing last year and I thought we were going to take care of that. The Family Counselling Centre is not asking for any more funding. They’re just asking for a line item to be moved. Are we telling these people that the services they provide are down on the totem pole? We should move these people a little higher up in the pecking order, otherwise we’re going to have nobody who’s going to want to volunteer for anything if they constantly have to wait and wait and wait and let everybody get their feed first and then they get what’s left over. I think it’s time that this government, instead of always talking about the social well-being of the residents of the NWT, start trying to do something about it and make sure these people get moved a little higher up the pecking order. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
---Applause