One of the things is in the process of being addressed--everything is always in the process of being addressed. We mentioned the economy and the fact that there are people falling through the cracks. One of the challenges is that our economy is to a great extent based on non-renewable resource development, and that creates boom and bust. In the boom, everything's happening; people are moving around. In the bust, those who can, move out, as Ben said, and for those who can't, the crack comes back down and they're back on the surface again.
Economic diversification, getting into some measure of stability in the economy would be one thing. CanNor and the Northern Economic Development Agency are a good first step on that. How can we grow on that?
This also ties to the discussion of housing. There's a Mohawk economist I've quoted from in a few presentations, and he says that no aboriginal community is going to excel until the government gets out of the housing area. Basically what he's talking about is the promotion of independence, the building of capacity there.
I ran an NGO for six years that was a community mobilization program. What we did was assist people in the transition from the traditional economy into the wage economy and the community around them. It pointed out to us that one of the key things... I'm a banker; I'm retired from a bank. I got involved in the program because I did the family budgeting thing. We ran 840 people through the program over those six years, and I found two in that period of time who could do budgeting for housing. The housing that's in the communities is frequently provided by the government, so it's not something people understand. When they move to a larger community, like Inuvik, Hay River, Fort Smith, or Yellowknife, they run into what Kate has described, in terms of what they're hitting.
Education is a critical component in preparing people for life, and I don't mean just the young kids coming up through school; I mean people moving into their first job. A person in the north could be moving into their first job at the age of 50, because they've suddenly decided that hunting and trapping are starting to get on their weary bones, so let's go drive a truck in a mine. There's a huge life-change decision that happens. Of the two people I ran into who could do housing, one of them was a fellow who was approaching 50 and had actually owned a home for a brief time.
Education is key, as is diversification of the economy, hopefully, so that there's more stability.