Thank you.
I'm originally from Ndilo, here in Yellowknife, born and raised. I'm here as a private citizen. I'm not here on behalf of my first nations. I am actually here to listen to Kate Wilson. I'm a social work student and Kate is my supervisor. I'm doing my practicum under her for today and then I go back to the homeless shelter at Alison McAteer House. As a student and as a first nations member of the Northwest Territories, I do see a lot of social issues in regard to first nations aboriginal people.
I want to talk a little bit about housing and the problems we see in our community.
In my community, in particular, and also in the surrounding Northwest Territories communities, we have a lot of problems with people not being eligible to move into social housing because of the criteria that's set. One of the eligibilities in order to get into social housing is based on income. A lot of the smaller communities don't have economic development or a lot of jobs. They would be eligible to move into social housing and they would get subsidized to live in social housing, but they won't be eligible to become homeowners. To be a homeowner, you would have to meet a certain wage level. So these people end up in social housing.
If they ever do get into a job, there's a level that's set by GNWT on how much rent would be assessed. I think it's 25% of the income that is taken for rent. A lot of the people can't afford that. They end up being in social housing, getting a job, and then getting their rent assessed at 25%. With the high cost of living in the remote communities, they end up having to leave their job just so they could stay in a subsidized unit. So that's a huge problem.
Also, if they were needing to get income support to help, they have to not be working. If they are working, then their income support gets taken away. The incentive now is to stay jobless or unemployed, because then you are eligible for subsidy and for income support. There's not a lot of incentive to go and work, especially because these people are not eligible to become homeowners. That's a huge problem in the communities. I think when Canada is giving money for housing in the Northwest Territories, it's based on a per capita basis. That doesn't work because of the high level of need in the Northwest Territories.
I just want to move over to education. We have a huge problem in the Northwest Territories with graduation rates. Although it shows there are a lot of graduates coming out of our schools in the Northwest Territories, because of that there is this thing called “certification of completion”. These students go through the grades and they can come out at the end of grade 12 with a certification of completion, but that is really just a social pass. It's not an actual diploma, a completion of a grade 12 diploma. Now, these students are not actually grade 12 students. If they want to move on to college or university, they are not eligible because they don't have that level of education.
Then they need to take what is called I think the university access program, and they need to upgrade in order to get into the program. The GNWT has put a cap on post-secondary funding--I think it's six years--so now these students who come out of grade 12 and who need to get into university are going to tie up their funding for the first year or the first two years just trying to get access into that program. So there's going to be a problem if that cap continues to stay in place.
The other issue I wanted to talk a little about was transportation into the communities. I think a feasibility study needs to be done to look at alternative ways to provide transportation into the communities. One of the alternatives I'm thinking of is the railway system instead of the actual highway system. If you go into the communities with the highways, then you're going to increase traffic and you're going to be bringing more vehicles into the north and more gas stations into the north. With our delicate ecosystem in the Northwest Territories, I don't know how long we could sustain that level of impact from vehicles and from gas emissions, so I would strongly encourage an alternative mode of transportation into the north, one possibility being the railway.
Homelessness in Yellowknife is a huge issue because of the people not being eligible to become homeowners. I think they need to teach these young kids who are in high school how to budget, and they're not teaching that right now. Maybe that can become part of the curriculum of high school.
I come from a generation in which my mom and dad never spoke English. They were hunters and trappers. My dad had a dog team, and I still have a lot of pictures of them. Both my parents are gone now. But just from their generation to my generation is a huge leap. My kids are getting into the wage economy, and that's their generation, but there's a huge push from our first nations to continue to keep our kids tied to the land and to the traditional way of life and their culture.
Even though there is a high demand for the wage economy to go up into the communities, I don't want to impose anything on them that they don't already want for themselves. So if I'm making any recommendations that the wage economy has to go up in the community, I don't want that to be an imposition on them. I think they need to know that if the issue is that wages need to go up, then they need to determine that for themselves.
The wage economy is something that's just in my generation and my kids' generation. Before that, my parents were part of the traditional economy. Although that era of traditional economy is dying out, I think there's still a great need in our first nations to continue that way of life for our first nations people.
I think there's a great need for our first nations to be able to deal with their social problems. There are a lot of alcohol and drug problems in the communities, and we have one treatment centre in the Northwest Territories, in Hay River. We do have some counselling services here in the Northwest Territories, but if you want to take a 28-day program, you would have to go to Hay River or even outside of the Northwest Territories, further south.
Because of the high level of addiction problems in the Northwest Territories, I think more treatment centres are called for up here.
Thank you very much.