Hello, everyone. Thank you for coming. I really appreciate being here.
I come from a riding in northern Saskatchewan. From La Loche to Cumberland House, it takes me 12 hours to drive, and if I'm going to drive to the far north from my home, it will take me 20 hours, so I can appreciate exactly what you're saying.
Here I am, as a member of Parliament. I go to Ottawa and I hear my colleagues say, “We're Canadian”. Yet in reality I don't feel that way, as a northerner, because of the discrepancies and because of the exclusions and because of how even the discussion occurring here.... A Canadian citizen is a Canadian citizen. That's how I see it and that's how northerners see it. So I really appreciate the input that you're providing to validate my thinking and what I experience even in my own riding. Thank you for that. I appreciate it.
I want to clarify about the northern caucus. There is no northern caucus. What we have going is an aboriginal caucus, an association. There are 10 members of Parliament, seven Liberals, one independent, and two NDP. We're trying to come together to form that. So we're working on that collectively.
Nation to nation, northerners, in my riding, and I'm sure Nathan's riding too, and all over the Northwest Territories, we, as aboriginal people, take that to heart. What that means to me is that I am the same citizen in Canada, so I have access to services and programs and to everything else. I'm really interested to hear how, first of all, we validate the 11 languages here in this territory and the other territories and the mid-north of the provinces. I'm really curious about how we could spend more time on that to make sure we engage northerners.
Are there any other suggestions?