Thank you, Madam Speaker. Today's budget address for Nunakput is this is what I'd like to see I guess in our budget if we could do anything, roughly 17 million or 4 percent of the GNWT's capital budget will be spent in Nunakput riding. How much of that operational budget is spent in my riding?
In Nunakput, we are in the High Arctic, the most remote communities, coldest darkest region. They don't have basic services that it can be a matter of survival, Madam Speaker. For instance, just last year in Ulukhaktok when the internet went down and a storm approaching, people couldn't access money to pay for gas, food, and basic supplies. Services with internet services need to be looked at in the communities. Service is essential and critical in my riding, Madam Speaker. They are lacking the basic services. We need improvements to ambulance services. We need improvements to transportation and bus services for the communities. Housing, housing's the biggest concern I have, Madam Speaker, in my riding. It's the health of the residents in our region. It's just overcrowding. We have to fix this issue. We have it's so hard on younger families. You know, you have to go live with your parents and you have one bedroom and there's three of you in it, and I have been dealing with constituents like that, and I have a 29 I was just told that they're number 29 on the waiting list. That's unacceptable. We have to work together. We can't have lip service no more. We have to work with the Housing Corporation, not just our government. It's our local community governments too. It's our Inuvialuit Regional Corporation, Inuvialuit Development Corporation, trying to work with the community corp to try to get houses built. We have to look at a different way. All I hear in this last week I've been here are, you know, our government's broke. We have to look at other avenues to find money. Finding that money is working with outside corporations to provide housing for the people. As long as they could get a longterm lease agreement in place, I'm pretty sure we can go down that road to providing service for our constituents.
When we're reducing our waitlist again, we have to get everything sorted out with our vacancies, housing vacancies, housing improvements, not just waiting for summer. We have to get things done as soon as possible. We can expect our, you know, families are growing, young parents, houses in need, and most of them are major repair, a lot of them. And those houses, we have to address the critical issues.
The critical issues in my riding, again, is housing. We need a business partner. We got to look out and work with the people. The private sector's willing to invest in solutions in my region. It needs to remove the barriers that they create as the Housing Corporation. Businesses need longterm lease commitments and partnerships need solutions in my riding. We need to find ways to take over the mortgages or just give old Housing HAP houses away. You can't pay $140,000 house when you don't even have a flush toilet in some of the communities that we represent. Unacceptable. We need to find ways, again, Madam Speaker, to get rid of the mortgages that don't need and give it away. Take it out of our housing stock, and then we're able to add.
We need to complete community housing plans like I've been working on for Nunakput. We need to get the housing plan set for each community we represent and getting our housing board, not the local housing board but a board that could work with the community corp and liaison in what's needed in that community, especially elders facilities. Because I got an aging population now, in my riding. I got people with dementia that's really I have five or six people in one of my communities that I represent that will be getting moved to Inuvik to long term. And soon as that happens, that's no good because you'll never seen them again.
Housing, Madam Speaker, my primary concern in Nunakput.
After housing, the GNWT needs to rethink our mental health supports. We need to do more counselling available. Feet on the ground, people being hired from outside. Don't have to be government people employees. Empower our own people. Send them out for training to get them empowered to help our own. I think that's one of the best things I heard today in one of our meetings. It's always good to hear somebody from the outside but we still have to work together to try, you know, live together. It's not we live it every day, Madam Speaker. Any communities we live in.
When I go home, when I leave Yellowknife, we don't have Starbucks or KFC or no essential people call it essential. We have a Northern store, Stanton, we're happy with that and we make do. But at the end of the day, we have to provide service.
Like I said earlier today, our government gets $35,000 per year per person, in the Northwest Territories, and not all of them are getting access to that and being served, you know. 130 litres of water a day; they don't get that, because Housing budgets because it's it's the local housing authority, you're they're budgeting so much because they get so much to provide service and there's only supposed to be so much in that unit but when you're overcrowded because you have nowhere else to go you're going to take them in. That has to be looked at. We have to really take a good hard look at what we're doing here. We need that handson approach for, you know, in our riding, our high rates of suicide. That has to be looked at, and I'm really happy to hear that there's places that our Ministers willing to work with to get our young youth help and bring people in to help us in our school and that. And so I'm really looking forward to that.
Madam Speaker, we need to make sure our residents have a house to live in and hope in their lives for a future.
My dad always said, you know, you have a roof overhead and you got food in the fridge and you're capable of working, we got it made. You know, we don't want much. But the housing units that we do have have to be liveable and have to, you know, be there we have to be there for the people we stand here in the House every time and we get, most of the time we don't get getting lip service. I always say lip service because it sounds good here on TV on the mikes but when it's time to get the work done, we have to really push. But now I know my Minister, the Ministers that I'm working with I know that they want change and I know that they want to do good. So we got 18 months I think left to try to do that, to represent, to get houses, elders facilities, private businesses to come up, and we have to work together for the betterment of the people and making sure that everybody's working together for the common good. And, you know, I just in conclusion, Madam Speaker, just the biggest thing is working together, again. Can't say it loud enough. Work together, get it done. No more talking. We got the money there; spend it. And thank you, Madam Speaker.
Applause
